Zambia’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, dead at 97

KENNETH Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president, who led his country for 27 years and championed Africa’s struggles against apartheid and HIV/Aids, has died at the age of 97.

“KK”, as he was popularly known, was being treated for pneumonia at the Maina Soko Medical Centre, a military hospital in Lusaka.

“On behalf of the nation, I pray that the entire Kaunda family is comforted as we mourn our first president and true African icon,” President Edgar Lungu said in a message on his Facebook page.

Authorities declared 21 days of mourning for the liberation hero who ruled from 1964, after the country won independence from Britain, until 1991.

Although Zambia’s copper-based economy fared badly under his stewardship, Kaunda will be remembered more for his role as an anti-colonial fighter who stood up to South Africa.

He shared a loss experienced by countless families in Africa when his son Masuzyo died of Aids in 1986, and he began a crusade against the disease.

“This is the biggest challenge for Africa. We must fight Aids and we must do so now,” he said in 2002. “We fought colonialism. We must now use the same zeal to fight Aids, which threatens to wipe out Africa.”

As leader of the first country in the region to break with its European colonisers, Kaunda worked hard to drag other former colonies along in Zambia’s wake towards majority rule.

In 1991, he was forced to hold the first multi-party elections for 23 years, which he lost to Frederick Chiluba.

Kaunda was a high-profile figure among the seven southern African states which led the fight against apartheid, and he let the ANC make a home-inexile in Lusaka during the three decades it was banned in South Africa. He also played a major role in Mozambique’s independence talks in 1975, Zimbabwe’s in 1980 and Namibia’s in 1990.