By Nalubinge Ngwende
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| Kenneth Kaunda |
Zambia’s first
president Kenneth Kaunda was, is and will forever remain a tyrant whose irreparable
damage to the country’s political and economic culture will never have anyone
take responsibility for, unless the country stops extoling this man and break
away from his ways.
The first step to
severing our present and future from Kaunda’s bad examples of managing this
country is to stop seeing him as an infallible hero and ask him to apologise.
A hero, he is, for
being among the freedom fighters that fought for our independence. But a closer
look at how he dispensed his power as the country’s first President, the heroism
is lost. Kaunda becomes a villain that lost Zambia’s battles to safeguard
democracy and ensure sustainable economic growth, leaving the country in an
abyss of economic darkness and political intolerance.
As first President
of this Southern African Nation that had vibrant and intelligent opposition
political leadership and seen as a very wealth newly Independent nation,
Kaunda’s arrogance to monopolise/personalise ideas of running the country did extensive
damage to democracy and economic activity of the independent Zambia.
Kaunda authored and
engraved the economic miseries the country grapples with today for the 27 years
he remained President. Today at 50 years of Independence, the country still
struggles to rewrite and offer solutions to the problems that KK created during
his over two decades rule.
He dismantled the
thriving business base he inherited at independence to achieve his asymmetrical
goals of trying to share wealth with freedom fighters that were good at nothing
but throwing stones void of any hint of mustering the economics of business.
Seduced by his narrow
viewpoint to stop people from acquiring and growing wealth to their full
potential, Kaunda in Humanism in
Zambia and a Guide to its Implementation Part II, gave instructions to
District Governors on how to ensure that private businesses in their
districts did not grow beyond ‘the bounds of a small family business’,
and how to avoid the emergence of ‘local over-mighty commercial barons’.
Even when his sense
of understanding world business was mediocre, he still listened to those who
feared to give him sensible arguments. If you refused Kaunda’s view point, then
you were an enemy to the nation and from that premises he pursued a one-party
state, pseudo-democracy that reigned over Zambia from 1972 to 1991.
He embarked on a
campaign of political repression using very narrow perspectives and systematic corruption
which scholars today think was necessary evil to ensure stability and social
services development.
Early into the
country’s independence, Kaunda presided over UNIP that is associated with the
bad foundation, a locked in position of poor political tolerance.
Kaunda and UNIP
were the first political party to manipulate the constitution to keep away
potential challengers from competing for leadership.
When Simon Kapwepwe
left the opposition United Progressive Party after Kaunda had harshly treated
its leadership, other than Kapwepwe, arresting and detaining them for alleged
violence, he (Kapwepwe) wanted to challenge Kaunda at a UNIP convention in
Kabwe.
Kaunda knowing that
most members who had joined UNIP and were delegates to the convention had
migrated from the banned UPP and were going to vote for Kapwepwe, quickly
through his central committee members he approved the changes to UNIP
constitution, inserting a clause that barred anyone who had been in UNIP for
less than five years not to contest the elections—which excluded Kapwepwe.
State police were
also mobilized to block Kapwepwe and his followers from gaining access to the convention
centre at Mulungushi in Kabwe. This political trickery that entered into
Zambia’s body politics in 1978 has continued to be a reference point of
politicians eliminating competition.
MMD’s Frederick
Chiluba in 1991 used the manipulation of the country’s constitution to stop
Kaunda from contesting elections by introducing a parentage clause in the law
barring persons whose parents were not born in Zambia from contesting
presidency during elections. Kaunda lost on an opportunity to test his
popularity at the 1996 polls.
MMD itself during
its reign also used party cadres to harass and beat party leaders who wanted to
openly challenge Chiluba to party presidency. This happened in the full view of
police who have been a disservice to the country, when it comes to protecting
the citizens’ rights to participate in intraparty and national politics from
violent intolerance.
In an interview
with Dick Hall, editor of the Central Africa Mail, Kaunda was asked if he had
any plans for making only one political party legal following UNIP’s sweeping
victory against the ANC led by Harry Nkumbula.
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| Kaunda did not keep his word on plural politics |
Kaunda answered:
On several times I have pointed out that we would like an opposition that is
non-tribal, non-racial and non-religious. A sweeping victory at any given
election is no mandate to you to legislate against the formation of an
opposition. It is our intention to give our electorate a periodic opportunity
either to give us a fresh mandate or reject us if we do not serve them properly
during any period in which we hold the reins of government. Coming straight to
your question about the ANC, we are happy to give them an opportunity to start
afresh, that is they must endeavor to be non-tribal and completely
constitutional and non-violent in their behavior. Any threats of bloodshed or
chaos we intend to deal with firmly.
Kaunda lied about
his tolerance towards the ANC and transferred the shared problem of political
violence that characterized politics a few months before the country took
independence from the colonial Britain on to his opponents. He also used a
narrow viewpoint of interpreting ANC strongholds among the Bantu Botatwe to
accuse the party of tribal politics.
This is why the
nation must know that Kaunda did not have any other perspective about
multi-party democracy. To him opposition political parties were distractive to
common decisions and a potential for tribal conflict.
He had inherent
hate for competition, which was also extended to private business he accused of
being too powerful and offered unfair competition to local businesses.
It is this
viewpoint about business that led Kaunda to push very awkward reforms that
either shut down trading shops for Asian entrepreneurs across the country or
forced bigger store chains to surrender 51 percent shares to government and to
employ Zambian managers. Consequently this led to nationalization of these businesses.
Like in all
tyrants, Kaunda used hate to name the evil other, hate it, and work to destroy
it at all costs.
Despite UNIP
members sharing the blame for political violence against ANC members and later
UPP, he still found a reason to blame it on the opposition. He used the blame as
a basis for unconstitutional detention of political opponents and banning their
political organisations.
Kaunda’s leadership
tendencies showed every sparkle of someone who was over controlling, thinking
only his thoughts were good for the country and every group of people that
wanted to pursue independent thought was considered as an obstacle that needed
to be crushed.
Preserving UNIP monopoly,
not just in decision making, but fear for others to offer alternatives that
could in long run make the citizens see Kaunda’s inadequacies in thought as ridiculous,
was his motivation to kill competition.
People say he was
not corrupt, but how can you measure that quality when the system did not have
institutions to provide independent checks and balances. The civil society in
the country was almost dead.
Kaunda is such a
narrow minded person, a true characteristic of tyranny, who advanced
questionable reasons as founded facts.
In
‘Humanism’, for example, Kaunda claimed that the enduring importance of chiefly
authority was representative of an authentically African model of consensual
and communitarian decision-making that made competing political parties not
only inappropriate, but also potentially destabilising bases for tribally-based
conflict. The logical conclusion of such arguments was the declaration of a
one-party state in 1972, presented as the ultimate expression of popular will,
but in fact UNIP’s only response to rising political opposition and its failure
to meet popular expectations of social and economic change [Jan-Bart Gewald et
al, One Zambia, Many Histories, a historiographical book].
It is surprising
today that those who choose to eulogise KK, as Kaunda is fondly referred to by
his diehard followers, still want to make us believe that he contributed to the
unifying of the country and contributed to the economic progress of this
country.
Zambia has never
been unified in its true sense. This is because below its surface lies deeply
divided political tensions that today, after 23 years of democratization, still
manifest as political violence within and across political party members due to
intolerance. There is no way a country can be said to be unified when a tyrant
in Kaunda tutored it bad politics of ruling without others using selfishness
and taught us to hate enterprise competition.
KK is now 90 years
and he may not live beyond the next decade. For his soul to rest in peace once
he joins his creator, he should apologise and ask for forgiveness for his
mistakes to this nation, failure to which his ghost will never be received
anywhere, not even when it goes to the hottest part of hell.
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