Kenneth Kaunda: An African Icon has died

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 18- The first President of post-independence Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda is dead. He died aged 97 years.

He was the country’s founding father and ruled for 27 years from 1964 when the southern African nation gained independence from Britain.

His death comes after reports emerged that he had been hospitalized at city military hospital last week where he was treated for pneumonia from Monday.

As one of the first generation of post-independence African leaders, he ruled a vulnerable and landlocked nation at a very perilous era in the southern Africa.

Up until 1991 when he was leaving power, Kaunda maintained domestic stability in a comparatively benign manner and at the same time providing bases for other southern African countries fighting for independence powerful and aggressive colonial masters.

In 1951, Kaunda joined the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress before falling out with the party and founding the Zambian African National Congress eight years later.

Kaunda’s ZANC was banned and resurfaced a few years later changing its name to United National Independence Party – UNIP.

Kaunda became President of that party and in a landslide victory, he became Zambia’s first president at independence from Britain in 1964.

KK, as he was known, was a dedicated fighter against colonial rule in Zimbabwe – Southern Rhodesia then and the apartheid in South Africa.

In 1973, Kaunda declared Zambia a one-party state, this will outlaw all opposition to the ruling party (UNIP).

In the mid-1980s local and international pressure descended on Kaunda to change the rules that kept him in power.

He was forced to reverse this decision in 1991 due to popular pressure provoked by shortages of basic foodstuffs.

He bowed down to pressure; and called for multiparty elections in 1991 in which Frederick Chiluba’s movement for multiparty democracy won.

Five years later, he attempted a political comeback, but was barred on constitutional grounds.

The Chiluba government changed the constitution so that anyone whose parents came from outside the country was deemed a foreigner and could therefore not run for elective office.

In the years that followed; Kaunda became one of Africa’s most vocal activists against HIV/AIDS – a disease he public announced claimed the life of one of his sons.

He was the youngest of eight children of a Church of Scotland minister and a teacher by training, just like his parents.