By Chanda Chisala
Earlier this year, Dr. Field Ruwe, a veteran Zambian writer based in the U.S. compared the 7 presidents that Zambia has had and declared that Kenneth Kaunda was the “best” president in Zambia’s short history. This was a shocking verdict, especially for anyone who actually lived under the traumatic rule of Kenneth Kaunda.
Threatened by the resurgent political clout of the charismatic Simon Kapwepwe, Kenneth Kaunda banned all opposition parties in the early 1970s, under the pretext of promoting national unity. From then on, he conducted sham elections in which his victory (against himself) got bigger even as the economy got worse, reaching nearly 100 percent of the vote by his last two elections. When he finally allowed other parties to contest the elections, he was resoundingly defeated and there was a renewed sense of freedom and hope in the air for the first time. The jubilations around Zambia were bigger than when Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations.
So, let’s be clear: a person who was overwhelmingly rejected by the people at his first attempt to allow real elections can not possibly be the best president that a country has had, especially if your metric has anything to do with economics. The reason the Zambian people booted out Kaunda was precisely because of the massive suffering that his expensive spending policies had produced. Dr. Ruwe’s claim that these policies achieved “self-reliance” for Zambia is a strange assessment given that the entire aim of such welfare policies is to make people dependent on the government’s endless “subsidies.”
The economic problems that the UPND is trying to solve today were not created by the PF. The problems that the PF was trying to solve were not created by the MMD. All the economic problems that all these political parties have been grappling with were created by Kenneth Kaunda and his United National Independence Party which was innocently committed to the suicidal philosophy of socialism.
Failing to recognize this simple fact is why we keep going round in circles because we haven’t learnt from the past. We eliminate one subsidy only to replace it with another one, and we even add more wasteful social “cash” programs that are reminiscent of Kaunda’s misguided policies.
The only way to emancipate Zambia is to completely eradicate anything that resembles the dangerous policies that Kenneth Kaunda pursued. We still toy with those policies because they were ingrained in us through his endless propaganda in schools and state-controlled media.
Thus the current government is trying to give away as many free things as possible, like Kaunda did, which is only hurting businesses as they have to maintain crippling levels of taxation and costly regulations. The opposition parties are really not any better as they don’t seem to have a clear concept of why the ruling party has failed, which is why they are all over the map in their attacks against the president. There is even an opposition party president that has vowed to fully return to Kaunda’s policies and has proudly named his party “the Socialist Party.” Imagine if he had formed his party one year after Kaunda was booted out and if he had told the people back then that he was trying to revive Kaunda’s policies. He is lucky that the current generation of young voters did not live through the dark cloud of tangible pain brought by Kaunda’s socialist nonsense of “humanism.”
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The author, Chanda Chisala, is the Founder of Zambia Online and Khama Institute. He is formerly a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and Visiting Scholar to the Hoover Institution, a policy think tank at Stanford. You can follow him on X @chandachisala.
You have very valid points, I believe if Harry Nkumbula who was more pro West took over the country, we would have an economy very similar to Botswana.
Sadly the socialists took over and ruined Zambia. That however does not mean capitalists can be better, it is a case by case situation and alot depends on the integrity of the man ruling the country. KK made a lot of mistakes for sure but I feel he also did some good along the way. However, Zambia should have chosen Nkumbula however would’ve been the right choice at that time to lead Zambia.
Simply Not true. VJ is still alive, he can give you a testament of the two
LT,why do I always receive a notice”there was a critical error on you website”,while other bloggers are allowed posting?
But to be honest KK never overborrowed like the PF or given Zambia its 1st ever debt default. Zambia’s best ever economic indicators came under Mwanawasa and Rupiah Bwezani Banda.
Are you sure, you are not aware of who has over borrowed. Look at the current numbers. I am not PF but I know that from what PF borrowed,they built roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and a lot of other real infrastructure. Though they were also pilfering through this avenue, their infrastructure was formidable. Very different from the current tuma one by three cdf buildings.
I was embarrassed to be a Zambian under Presidents Banda, Sata, Chiluba, Mwanawasa. Chiluba destroyed the Zambian housing setup.
Without KK, Zambia would have wound up as a failed state. He operated in a tough geo-political environment, yet managed to hold the country together. Had Chiluba not been reckless, Zambia would have by now been well industrialized.
Spoon-feeding is what destroyed us. Up to now we’re still asking for tantameni. Our huge treasury was partly spent on unnecessary freedom struggles, on infrastructure development and hand-outs
No emphasis on hard work and selfreliance
Let’s pray that HH7, will continue preaching the “working hard” motto whilst removing slowly dependence on government. Once we catch this concept and ignore Why Me characters and the Defunct TuPF criminals, our future will be bright
It’s shocking that Dr. Ruwe came up with that finding
The worst is HH
Go back to school and learn tenses. Was is past ,is it is present continuous.
Besides you cant judge some one who hasn’t even completed his term unless you are operating from a heart of hatred, jealous and bitterness.
So who told you Socialism does not work anywhere in the world. The biggest Capitalist, the West, is a bulldozer. Have you not seen how improved China and Russia are?
Zambia was economically sanctioned by the same West, Britain and America, wishing for a regime change all because Kaunda did not support race iniquities in RSA. KK tried his very best.
You are left behind. Who told you that China and Russia are still Socialist states? The Political Party of China is the one which is Socialist but their economy is pure Capitalism. Chinese are mOre Capitalists than the Capitalists.
For HH, why wait for 5 years to judge him. Didn’t he himself tell us that he would be sworn in at 10hrs and that by 14hrs the exchange rate would improve, should we wait for his term to finish for us to judge this voluntarily given time frame. If a man has failed, just say so, politics aside
The worst is HH of course, I love him with all my heart, but with due respect, the man has failed. We have the worst economic stats since independence against his own promises. He tried to blame PF, tried to blame Russia Ukraine war and then settled for the drought. He has played his part, let us thank him for the attempt and substitute him, with who, we don’t know. But let the man rest.
Go back to school and learn tenses. Was is past ,is it is present continuous.
Besides you cant judge some one who hasn’t even completed his term unless you are operating from a heart of hatred, jealous and bitterness.
These are the USAID funded chaps sent to destabilse the developing countries. Theory, theory and Bemba tribalism thrown in. Simon Kapwepwe was a tribalist who would have destroyed Zambia if he had been allowed to have his way. He resigned his post claiming, ‘MY people are being victimised.’ He was the second person to for a tribally inclined party (UPP) after the Barotse National Party. Fortunately, real Bembas knew that Kapwepwe was as Tanzanian as KK was Malawian. They rejected him and stuck with One Zambia, One nation. As for toughness, if KK had not been tough, Southern Africa would not have been liberated, because, South African money would have bought a Zambian president.
Apa there is no need to wait for his term to finish to judge him, the failure is beyond reasonable doubt. Of course, he will soon start massaging the economy as we move towards, elections but mebo ndakaka please, it’s too late
The writer is trying to erase very rich history from where for those of us who lived thru it,including HH are ready to defend bcoz it was the best
Writer also! Can you even ask that question, everybody can see that we are passing through the worst of the worst economic and governance times right now. Love him or hate him, all the economic indicators are against HH, and it was not like that when he took over.
This article could have done well to do research.
A beautiful and realistic writeup. Although I don’t believe in finger pointing, the BigMan approach that kaunda adopted, deprived us of other ways of doing things. He compassion destroyed individual hard working culture. But let the sleeping dogs lie. 35 years is a lot of time to make significant transformation, but we keep fantasising thinking free is lake. We shall die in poverty unless we change
Of the first Sis past Presidents, with no doubt the beat was Mwanawasa!
Second was Kaunda – very selfish and power hungry.
The rest were Pretenders – no or inequitable directions, with poor or bad visions.
Hichilema will, eventually, takeover from Mwanawasa.
How can Hichilema take over from Mwanawasa. Go to Zamstat website and check his economic stats ever since he took over. Propaganda won’t help. HH is undoubtedly the worst going by the highest cost of living since independence
worst president Harrision Hanbukulu
Politicians in this country are the only ones who never learn from the past and so we continue to wallow in abject poverty as a country and as long as we don’t learn these lessons nothing good will come out.
And his new title in some parts of Northern Zambia is Kaimbi uwa ubufi, and I just heard it when I went there recently, and when I asked who they were refering to they told me it is President …………
Then in Lusaka ati “ochosapo timuziba, wamene sitiza niofakapo”
Don’t know who was the worst but best was levy hands down.
The title is supposed to read “Who Is the Worst President of Zambia?” Not was.