The Zambian government on Thursday announced the death at the age of 97 of the country’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda, the father of the independence of the former British protectorate, which he led for 27 years.
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He was nicknamed “African Gandhi” for his non-violent activism. Kenneth Kaunda led the former northern Rhodesia to bloodless independence in 1964. He “died peacefully” at 2.30pm (12.30pm GMT) in hospital, said Secretary of State Simon Miti on Thursday. National mourning for 21 days has been declared.
The former head of state, also nicknamed “KK”, was in hospital on Monday at a military hospital in the capital Lusaka for pneumonia. The current president, Edgar Lungu, expressed his “great sadness” in a message on Facebook. “You left when we least expected it,” he wrote, lamenting that a “true African icon” had disappeared.
The youngest in a family of eight children, Kenneth Kaunda was born in 1924. The son of a pastor from Malawi, he first turned to teaching. Then reported to politics in the northern Rhodesian branch of the ANC. Which earns him a few months in jail. When he left, he founded the United Party for National Independence, Unip, and in 1964, at the age of 40, became the youngest Prime Minister of the Commonwealth.
Re-elected every five years
When the Republic of Zambia was proclaimed on October 24 of that year, he became its first president. But very quickly, and from the first years of independence, the popular leader turned into an autocrat. It bans all opposition parties. Only Unip is authorized because it avoids dissolution of the country.
Elected every five years, he remains in power for 27 years and his popularity in his country declines. He is heavily involved in the termination of apartheid in South Africa and receives Nelson Mandela after his release, but fails to stop the deterioration of Zambian’s everyday life. Hunger riots and growing protests drive him to accept multi-party politics. In 1991, he was defeated in free elections and forced to give way to Frederick Chiluba.
The tensions with his successor are such that Kenneth Kaunda withdrew from political life in the 2000s and then focused on mediation missions on the African continent and the fight against AIDS, a disease that one of his sons suffered from.
Kenneth Kaunda was a president who enjoyed a great reputation abroad. In the West for accepting the multi-party system and the result of the election. On the African continent to support the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
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