Kenneth Kaunda

It was November 2, 1991, in Zambia.

A president had just lost an election. He had governed the country for twenty-seven years. That day, he handed power to the man who had beaten him, Frederick Chiluba.

He showed him around State House, the presidents' residence, himself. Then he left.

As a keepsake, he took the presidential pennant from his car.

That man was Kenneth Kaunda.

He was born on April 28, 1924, at Lubwa Mission, near Chinsali. The country was then called Northern Rhodesia, a British colony. He was the youngest of eight children.

His father, the Reverend David Kaunda, was a missionary and teacher from Nyasaland, today's Malawi. He died when Kenneth was a child. His mother, Helen Nyirenda, was the first African woman to teach in the colony.

Kenneth became a teacher too. He was headmaster at Lubwa, then taught in Tanganyika and Southern Rhodesia.

He read Gandhi. Those writings, he would later say:

In 1949, he joined the African National Congress of Northern Rhodesia. He became its secretary-general.

In 1958 and 1959, at the head of another movement, ZANC, he led what he called "positive nonviolent action": civil disobedience against the colonial federation.

He knew prison. Two months of hard labour in 1955, for distributing writings deemed "subversive." Then, in March 1959, ZANC was banned and he was sentenced to nine months in prison. He came out on January 8, 1960, and became president of a party, UNIP.

That year, he visited Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta.

On October 24, 1964, Zambia became independent. Kenneth Kaunda was its first president.

He wanted a politics built on human equality and national unity. He called it Zambian humanism. It blended state planning with traditional African values: mutual aid, trust, loyalty to the community.

He also opened his country to the movements fighting for freedom next door. Zambia imposed sanctions on Rhodesia, and paid dearly for it.

But his rule had a shadow. In 1972, he imposed one-party rule. In 1973, he was the only candidate in the election. Unrest at the university was suppressed. His humanism also had its critics.

Then, in 1990, he allowed opposition parties again. And in 1991, the voters chose someone else.

He accepted the result. He was one of the very first heads of state in mainland Africa to leave power peacefully after losing a free election.

Later, he gave himself to other struggles. Above all, the fight against HIV/AIDS.

One of his children had died of AIDS in the 1980s. He spoke about it openly.

Kenneth Kaunda died on June 17, 2021, in Lusaka. He was 97.

His Zambian humanism echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing: a politics that sought to make mutual aid and community the heart of a nation.

What remains of him is an independence, a shadow, and a rare gesture.

A man who shows his house to the one who beat him. Then walks away, taking a small pennant with him.