DEFENDING KENNETH KAUNDA: Author's response to reader.

Dear DC,

Thanks for your response to my article. I think your response is quite informative even if I don't agree with everything you said. Remember I did mention in my article that Chiluba was wrong to treat Kaunda like he had not achieved anything at all and to treat him like a commoner when he is clearly a deserving dignitary; I think chiluba was just caught in the mood of the moment, doing what everyone wanted him to do just like what's happening now with the current leadership. Unfortunately, the theme of the article was not to correct the Chiluba mistake but to correct those that are now heaping exaggerated praise on the man. Naturally, I had to emphasise the points that bring balance to this error.

And I think you too have also given too much credit to him, even for things that were not his doing. The formation of the Post newspaper, for example, was not an achievement of his but something that came due to pressure on him. If you are going to praise him for that just because it came during his rule, you might as well praise him for the formation of the MMD since it also came during his time. And the great and unique urbanisation phenomenon of Zambia was not his achievement but a natural achievement of the mining companies started by the colonialists. If anything, Kaunda tried to reverse this trend through his “go back to the land” program. You err in crediting him with achieving the second highest urbanisation rate in Africa.

On my Singapore statement, I did not say Zambia's economy was BIGGER than Singapore's is TODAY! Read the statement again.

Our economy was great in the first decade after independence simply because he had inherited a lot of money and a lot of companies formed by other people. Everything he did during that time only contributed to the subsequent destruction of the economy and the systematic depletion of the resources he inherited. Other people in Zambia saw it and warned him about it.

On Kaunda's portrait on our money. You say Americans have done it too and you use that point to demonstrate that I am just attacking him for the sake of it or for some emotional reason. However, I think you do see the difference: Kaunda put the portrait on the money himself. And yet the revisionist admirers of him call him 'selfless'? Those american leaders had their portraits engraved by other people, not themselves. And neither did they name streets, schools or companies after themselves. The John F. Kennedy airport was not named by John F. Kennedy! Only dictators do such things.

I also have a problem with this statement you asserted so boldly:

When I analyzed the accusations that people like you and the Post heaved (sic) up against KK, I saw that they were just unfair and untrue. You accused him of having stolen $4 billion, you accused him of having Hotels and Brothels in England, You accused him of having Oil Wells in Iraq, you also accused him of killing Nalumino Mundia, Gibson Chigaga and many others. These are the kinds of lies that convinced me that you were all just too emotional about queuing up for Saladi and Mealie Meal. Evidently, you Chanda has not been able to overcome that anger to this date. How sad!!!

You should not have used the pronoun "you" in this passage because you have attributed to me something that is foreign to my principles. I never accuse anyone of something that I have no evidence for. The Post were also just reporting what the politicians were saying, especially the melodramatic Michael Sata. I might be wrong, but I do not think they made those accusations themselves. And your presumption that I have some "anger" against him that I have somehow failed to get over is obviously preposterous. Who stays annoyed so long for something that affected everyone? You must understand that there is no one who is angry at Kaunda up to today, and this is precisely why we are faced with the dangerous temptation of rewriting history to fit with our current feeling of forgiveness. I simply proposed that our history should be separated from our feelings. We need to keep an accurate record of events, attitudes and achievements even when we no longer feel annoyed because facts do not change according to emotions. If we keep rewriting history depending on the prevailing emotional currents, we shall never learn anything, but will instead forever flow with the mood of the moment rather than the convictions of our minds established from reality.

You also defend him by saying he did not have many examples of other nations that had gone the democratic way or the multiparty way at that time. This is simply false. Examples were too many even back then; this was not the sixteenth century. And not only that, there were critics even locally who could see that this was the wrong direction to go for a civilised nation. How did these other people see it without the blessing of “20/20 hindsight vision”? They were also not university graduates but had the same education, if not worse, as Kaunda's. Kapwepwe – whom you call a tribalist without offering any evidence whatsoever, making your allegation quite suspicious – was not the only one who opposed Kaunda’s irrational decision. There were many others who were exposed enough to know that this was a wrong direction and they have been proven right by time. A “1991 revolution” could not happen in 1972 because there were too few educated people in 1972 compared to 1991 to organise such a large movement (it also required a lot of resources which the few enlightened opponents of one-partyism could not easily find). Besides, the people who could have led such a revolution were all thrown into jail, and Kaunda easily sold to the people the myth that these men were just “tribalists”, not visionaries (a myth which amazingly persists to this day).

I am also forced to inform you that Kaunda’s paranoia with other powerful people was not limited to politicians (or political parties). The Lumpa movement of Ms. Alice Lenshina was not a political party but a religious organisation and Kaunda had to destroy it – with guns! The only crime Lenshina committed was to openly hold anti-government (i.e., anti-Kaunda) opinions. Many of her obsequious followers, who paused no threat whatsoever to public security, were killed, and Lenshina was jailed (and died in prison). This is how far KK was willing to go for his political hegemony; a great man, indeed.

Then you wrote:

People sang songs to his tribute out of their own love and appreciation for him not because they were forced to do so. There were songs even by foreigners which echoed this love all over the southern hemisphere. This must have given him a sense of pride which led to his desire to stay on in power. So in essence we created the dictator Kaunda out of the good Kaunda of the early years.

Quite surprisingly, after you spend so many words rejecting the thesis of my article – that Kaunda was a dictator – you now admit that he was indeed a dictator, except we are the ones who "created the dictator Kaunda out of the good Kaunda of the early years". This makes the purpose of your “rebuttal” difficult to grasp. If you admit that he did become a dictator then I cannot understand why you keep rejecting everything I have said that points to that dictatorial nature – including things he did in the eighties and nineties when you too allege he had become a dictator “because we made him one”. I would be curious to know what evidence you have that he did indeed become a dictator since my examples have all been rejected as not showing a dictatorial nature. This makes your argument rather confusing, if not dishonest.

And no, we did not make him a dictator (by the way). He did it himself. When people praise you for your achievements, you do not automatically become a dictator or haughtily prideful, unless you already have a small mind. Don't give excuses for him because we shall have another leader who will one day use that excuse to become a dictator. It's simply false. If your theory was true, Mandela would have become a dictator much faster than anyone in the history of the world - but he remained humble and never even got addicted to power. More songs have been written in praise of Mandela than any leader I know of in history, and yet he has remained sober, not taking the praises or even himself too seriously. That's real greatness. The first two presidents we had were not great at all, as evidenced by their obsession with power (and praise) and their desire to hold on to it forever – they thought the power and praise was metaphysically ‘real’. They thus found their sense of value and identity in the political power itself instead of placing it in the strength and character of their minds alone, as Mandela and many other great people have done. We do not know how our current president shall end up, but I hope he shall learn from an accurate record of the past instead of the new, revised one so that he might not fall into a similar trap as his predecessors.

As for your numbered list of reasons why we became poor, they might not appear coherent to me, but I guess you are entitled to an opinion. On such issues it is difficult to agree because we simply see things differently. This goes along with your other list of companies that you somehow believe KK conceived and formed personally from his own “brilliant” mind, “in spite of having only a form two education”!

You also say he introduced a one party state because “unity was very important at that time”. No, unity can never ever be more important than freedom of expression of ideas, freedom of (peaceful and rational) assembly, and all the human rights of individuals – this is what we should tell future generations and not what you are saying. And tribalism can be eradicated in many ways apart from banning people from joining the political party of their choice or expressing their thoughts freely in public. The examples you gave of other nations that had tribal wars is not plausible for the simple reason that their wars were never waged mainly along organised political party lines, but purely along tribal or ideological ones – so, if Zambia was going to have some tribal war it was not going to be stopped by declaring a single party state (you do not need a political party to start a tribal war or even to be tribalist; you just need a very small mind). There were many multiparty states in Africa that never had any tribal wars (especially along party distinctions), thus invalidating your theory even further. In fact, going by your argument, political parties should be banned in Zambia today because there is still evidence of some voting along tribal lines (especially in the last elections), but that is not unique to Zambia or even to Africa. That you somehow see sense in Kaunda’s ostensible solution to such a “problem” is quite surprising.

And as for politicians, they will not concentrate on developmental work (as you assume), whether there are opposition parties around or not. When you ban opposition parties they will still find other targets for their squabbles – perhaps a Roy Clarke or someone as insignificant? The problem has more to do with I.Q. than anything else, I think - but that's also just my unproven theory.

Finally. I know it’s possible for us to find something positive Kaunda achieved for us (besides independence and … er … one or two other things) if we search really, really hard. But a positive does not delete a negative. The negatives are too many to miss. He might have achieved something in education for some Zambians, but I think everyone exaggerates his accomplishments even in this area, especially if taken in absolute statistical terms. You might have had a great education through Mpelembe, but how many Zambians can say that? How many people who started grade one in Zambia ended up with a university degree? Less than 1 per cent of them, even in Kaunda’s “great education policy” days – did you know that? I don’t know why anyone should be praised for such an achievement. He spent more money helping thankless South Africa, Rhodesia, Namibia, etc than he did on his own people’s education. No, I disagree with you – it was not worth it at all. He is always praised for building two universities, but I think that it is embarrassing for such a large country to have only two small universities (and with only a tiny drop of people graduating every year). Is it because he did not have enough money? No, the money was there but it went to fight liberation wars in other countries, earning Kaunda the foreign praise you alluded to. There could have been another Zambian working with you in a big corporation today and also making big money, but they could not receive their university education because the money was going to help Mugabe / Nkomo win independence from the British settlers only to come and destroy its economy, making both Zimbabwe and her trade partner Zambia much worse off as a result.

That’s what his great southern Africa liberation investment has achieved. Do you know that if he had forgotten about those other countries we could have probably built twenty universities in Zambia, thus educating all those determined people that have instead ended up selling hair combs and stolen socks on the streets? Instead of using the great opportunity he had (of using our money any way he wanted) to at least do something sensible with the human potential, he decided that we should become a donor country in Africa and we ended up losing everything. If this is not the unforgivable sin, then at least it is the unforgettable one. I hope you now understand that, unlike yourself, it was not just the long queues for commodities that I think was wrong with KK. (Gosh – did I say I am not angry with him any more?)

Anyway. Thank you again. I enjoyed reading your mail because of its informative content about our past that many people might not know about. I acknowledge your sincerity and your success in achieving some sort of “closure” about the past. It’s healthy to disagree and debate, rationally.

Author.

p/s: Just as this this article was being prepared for Internet publication, Kaunda was generous enough to provide us with another 'free' reminder of how he used to do things: he suggested that the best way to deal with the current plunderer issue would be to simply declare a state of emergency! In other words, all of us would have started living in fear (as we did in KK's time) in case the police lock you up for just taking a walk in the evening, all because we want the "plunderers" imprisoned. I am also tempted to wonder if these same people would have even received a fair court trial (had it been in KK's day), particularly in a case where the president's views are clearly known, but that's another issue.

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Author can be contacted at zambia@africamail.com. Correspondence with author can be published or not.