The countries of southern Africa, through an extraordinary and unique experience, owe their freedom and liberty to the people of Zambia and the UNIP’s potent strain of internationalism under the leadership of Kenneth David Kaunda. Dikobé Ben Martins traces the history of the popular struggle for freedom six decades on from the country’s independence.
The 1885 feverish and unholy rush for the plunder and division of Africa, which resulted in the Berlin Conference, came upon Africa like a desert dust storm. This marked the inglorious continuation of five centuries of the slave trade, which placed Africa under the yoke of colonial rule. Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, the primary thieving nations shared the spoils of balkanisation.
Zambia, the midwife of southern African liberation struggles, celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its independence on the 24th October 2024. The history of Zambia like that of most African countries is a history of the development of nationalism through the twentieth century.
Nationalist movements in Zambia emerged after World War II.
André Matswa ma Ngoma was one of the forerunners of mass nationalism and its later revolutionary potentials. Others like the trade unionist Masawa in the 1930s organised strike actions among urbanised wage-workers, who were exploited and underpaid on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt. In one of these strikes police bullets killed six Africans and wounded twenty-two during a copper mining stoppage. In 1940 during a bigger stoppage, the police killed seventeen workers and wounded sixty- nine workers.
After 1950 trade unions became organic components of nationalist movements, until the winning of independence decimated their value to the nationalist leaders.
Northern Rhodesia in the early 1950s saw the emergence of a determined leadership composed of men like Dr Kenneth David Kaunda. The new leaders, gathering mass support on the foundations of past local struggles made progress. They also found support in radical circles in Britain, including in a small but formidable fraction of the British Labour Party. Gradually too, they found an audience among a number of Conservatives, who began to think that the wisdom of the future advised for an African future and progress acceptable to British interests.
In tandem with the afore going, various pressures of radical action and the politics of constitutional reforms brought success, success characterised by phases of repression and liberation struggle counter-action and activism.
The United National Independence Party (UNIP) was founded in October 1959 by Mark Chona as a successor of the Zambian African National Congress ( ZANC ) which was banned earlier that year. Dr Kenneth David Kaunda assumed the leadership of UNIP after he was released from a nine-month prison spell in 1960. After a convincing victory in the Northern Rhodesian general elections in 1964, when UNIP won 55 of the 75 seats, Dr Kaunda became Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia and led the country to independence on the 24th October 1964, when he became president.
Northern Rhodesia became Zambia in 1964.
The United National Independence Party (UNIP) formed its first cabinet under Dr Kenneth David Kaunda who served as the president of the country from 1964 until 1991.
Zambia through its strategic geo-political position, was one of the frontline states that supported the liberation struggles of Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa.
Zambia which became a member of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Liberation Committee in 1965, was fully committed to the total liberation of Africa, which was enshrined in Article II of the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity.
President Kaunda espoused the principles of majority rule, for Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and South Africa as the primary basis for durable peace rooted in freedom and justice. To this end, Zambia fully supported the peoples of these countries when they took up arms to remove the oppressor regimes that held them in thrall.
Zambia, together with other newly independent African states, resolved to unite their efforts and resources through the Organisation of African Unity in the fight against colonialism, under development and imperialism. In April 1969 this led to the Lusaka Manifesto on southern Africa which spelled out the principles upon which the liberation process was based.
Zambia allowed liberation movements and freedom fighters to establish bases and transit camps, from which they launched attacks on the territories still under colonial rule and minority regimes. The Frontline states, Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe were collectively and individually the rear bases for southern African countries struggling for independence.
The Frontline States addressed, organised, coordinated and played a crucial part in liberation struggles in southern Africa, in conjunction with liberation parties and movements.
The southern African liberation struggles were borne by the people of Zambia.
Through political education and sacrifice the majority of Zambians understood and supported government policies that supported the liberation of southern Africa.
The price for liberating southern Africa was very high for ordinary Zambians and freedom fighters who paid the ultimate price. Development infrastructure was destroyed through targeted apartheid regime bombings. The cost of hosting freedom fighters, refugees and maintaining Zambia’s defence force was immense.
These factors, combined with the hike of the oil price in the early 1970s, the prolonged slump in copper prices throughout the seventies and eighties, resulted in a sharp decline in the standard of living of Zambians.
In the 1968 general elections UNIP won 81 of the 105 electoral seats in the National Assembly. In 1973, the country became a one-party state with UNIP as the sole legal party. Elections were held under the same system in 1978, 1983 and 1988.
At the end of 1990 multi-party general elections were reintroduced, and the UNIP was roundly defeated in the 1991 general elections by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD ).
The UNIP boycotted the 1996 general elections, following constitutional changes which effectively barred Dr Kaunda from running for president again. The UNIP returned to contest the 2001 elections and the subsequent 2006, 2011 and 2016 general elections which progressively saw the party’s electoral fortunes withering away to 0.24%. One phase of Zambian history came to an end, and another began.
The countries of southern Africa, through an extraordinary and unique experience, owe their freedom and liberty to the people of Zambia and what was UNIP’s potent strain of internationalism.
Dikobé Ben Martins is Secretary for International Relations of the South African Communist Party
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation
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Photo: Freedom Statue, Lusaka. lusakajoe55/CC BY-NC 2.0
