Kenneth Kaunda

Who is Kenneth Kaunda?

Kenneth David Kaunda was born on 28 April 1924 in Lubwa, near Chinsali in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), the son of a schoolteacher and Church of Scotland missionary from Nyasaland and a mother who was among the first African women to teach in colonial Zambia. He trained and worked as a teacher before entering nationalist politics, joining the African National Congress and rising to become its secretary-general in the early 1950s. When the movement split over strategy in 1958-59, Kaunda helped form the more militant Zambia African National Congress, for which he was imprisoned by colonial authorities. On his release in January 1960 he was elected president of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), and through skilled negotiation over the following years he led Northern Rhodesia to independence as the Republic of Zambia on 24 October 1964, becoming its first president. He championed the unifying motto "One Zambia, One Nation" and a homegrown philosophy he called Zambian Humanism, while playing a prominent role supporting liberation movements across southern Africa as a leader of the Front Line States. In 1972 he declared Zambia a one-party state, ruling until multi-party elections in 1991, which he lost to Frederick Chiluba. He remained a respected elder statesman until his death in Lusaka on 17 June 2021, aged 97.

Sources: Britannica, "Kenneth Kaunda" · Encyclopedia.com, "Kenneth David Kaunda" · BlackPast.org, "Kenneth Kaunda (1924- )"