Northern Rhodesia: Roar of the Black Lion

Welcome banners bedecked Lusaka’s postage-stamp airport, and 2,000 jubilant Africans pressed against its wire fence, their faces daubed festively with red ink, and frantically waving ceremonial palm fronds. Out of the Dakota transport stepped a shock-haired, anthracite-black man in a natty suit. To cheers of “Ken, our Zambia boy!” he unfurled a banner that proclaimed: REPUBLIC DAY, OCTOBER 24. Then he said: “I told you before we left we were going to collect a republic. We have brought it back to you.”

Thus last week Northern Rhodesian Prime Minister Kenneth (“The Black Lion”*) Kaunda returned from London bearing a long-coveted gift for his 3,500,000 people: a fixed date for independence. Next Oct. 24, Northern Rhodesia will become the Common wealth Republic of Zambia.

Going It Alone. For ten years Northern Rhodesia formed part of Britain’s ill-starred Central African Federation, in which the black-dominated protectorate was bound awkwardly to equally black Nyasaland and white-ruled Southern Rhodesia. Last year, after Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland demanded independence, London reluctantly cut the ties among the three. Nyasaland is to gain independence in July, but is poor in resources and rich in unemployment. Southern Rhodesia is rent with racial strife because it refuses to grant equal representation to blacks, has received no independence date. Of the trio, Northern Rhodesia’s future looks by far the brightest.

One reason is that, despite its need to develop educational and agricultural resources, Northern Rhodesia is inherently richer than its two neighbors—thanks to fabulous copper reserves that net $336 million a year. A more important cause for optimism is Kenneth Kaunda himself. A teetotaling preacher’s son and ex-schoolteacher, Kaunda, 40, is a fiery nationalist who has spent his share of time in British prisons. But he has since convinced his former masters that he has the makings of a moderate African statesman in the mold of Tanganyika’s Nyerere. Kaunda advocates a “multiracial society” that will protect the rights of the white minority. He favors foreign investment, has promised just negotiations with the British-owned copper companies for an increased local share of the take.

No Nonsense. During the 16-day independence conference in London, Kaunda so impressed the Colonial Office that Northern Rhodesia will be the first British-ruled territory allowed to make the jump to full independence without the usual period of dominion status under the symbolic tutelage of a Queen’s governor-general. Under a new constitution that includes safeguards for individual rights, Kaunda will take over as President.

After his return home, Kaunda beamingly shook hands with his Cabinet ministers, who had turned out in slogan-emblazoned “freedom shirts.” Then he drove through cheering crowds to his neon-lighted United National Independence Party headquarters (formerly a dry-cleaning plant). There he praised his reception as “nonracial, nontribal and purely Zambian.” Then the Black Lion, who has shrewdly raised the pay of his soldiers and police to discourage dissension like that which jarred East Africa, made clear that he can be as tough as he is mild-mannered. Said he, addressing himself to his country’s often troublesome trade unions, and by implication to all future Zambians: “This government is strong and here to stay. I do not want to hear any more nonsense from anyone.”

*So nicknamed, according to one account, because he once met a lion, frightened the beast into retreating by staring it down.