53 Facts About Kenneth Kaunda

Kenneth Kaunda was at the forefront of the struggle for independence from British rule.

Kenneth Kaunda was briefly stripped of Zambian citizenship in 1999, but the decision was overturned the following year.

Kenneth Kaunda was born on 28 April 1924 at Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, then part of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and was the youngest of eight children.

Kenneth Kaunda's father, the Reverend David Kaunda, was an ordained Church of Scotland missionary and teacher, who had been born in Nyasaland and had moved to Chinsali, to work at Lubwa Mission.

Kenneth Kaunda's mother was a teacher and was the first African woman to teach in colonial Northern Rhodesia.

Kenneth Kaunda attended Munali Training Centre in Lusaka between 1941 and 1943.

Kenneth Kaunda was a teacher at the Upper Primary School and Boarding Master at Lubwa and then Headmaster at Lubwa from 1943 to 1945.

Kenneth Kaunda was then assistant at an African Welfare Centre and Boarding Master of a Mine School in Mufulira.

Kenneth Kaunda was Vice-Secretary of the Nchanga Branch of Congress.

In 1949 Kenneth Kaunda entered politics and became the founding member of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress.

ZANC was banned in March 1959 and in Kenneth Kaunda was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, which he spent first in Lusaka, then in Salisbury.

When Kenneth Kaunda was released from prison in January 1960 he was elected president of UNIP.

Kenneth Kaunda subsequently ran as a UNIP candidate during the 1962 elections.

Kenneth Kaunda instituted a policy where all children, irrespective of their parents' ability to pay, were given free exercise books, pens, and pencils.

Kenneth Kaunda was appointed Chancellor and officiated at the first graduation ceremony in 1969.

Only by threatening to expropriate it on the eve of independence did Kenneth Kaunda manage to get favourable concessions from the BSAC.

However, in early 1972, he faced a new threat in the form of Simon Kapwepwe's decision to leave UNIP and found a rival party, the United Progressive Party, which Kenneth Kaunda immediately attempted to suppress.

Finally, Kenneth Kaunda neutralised Nkumbula by getting him to join UNIP and accept the Choma Declaration on 27 June 1973.

Kenneth Kaunda developed a left nationalist-socialist ideology, called Zambian Humanism.

In 1980, Kenneth Kaunda purchased sixteen MiG-21 jets from the Soviet Union, which ultimately provoked a reaction from the United States.

Kenneth Kaunda responded to the United States, stating that after numerous failed attempts to purchase weapons, buying from the Soviets was justified in his duty to protect his citizens and Zambian national security.

Until approximately 1984, Kenneth Kaunda was arguably the key African leader involved in international diplomacy regarding the conflicts in Angola, Rhodesia, and Namibia.

Kenneth Kaunda hosted Henry Kissinger's 1976 trip to Zambia, got along very well with Jimmy Carter, and worked closely with President Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker.

For much of the Cold War, Kenneth Kaunda was a strong supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Kenneth Kaunda hosted a NAM summit in Lusaka in 1970 and served as the movement's chairman from 1970 to 1973.

Kenneth Kaunda maintained a close friendship with Yugoslavia's long-time leader Josip Broz Tito; he was remembered by many Yugoslav officials for weeping openly over Tito's casket in 1980.

Kenneth Kaunda visited and welcomed Romania's president, Nicolae Ceausescu, in the 1970s.

Kenneth Kaunda had frequent but cordial differences with US president Ronald Reagan whom he met 1983 and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher mainly over what he saw as a blind eye being turned towards South African apartheid.

Kenneth Kaunda always maintained warm relations with the People's Republic of China who had provided assistance on many projects in Zambia, including the Tazara Railway.

Kenneth Kaunda was accompanied by a British nurse, Daphne Parish, who was arrested.

Bazoft was later tried, convicted, and executed, but Kenneth Kaunda managed to negotiate for his female companion's release.

Kenneth Kaunda served as chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 1970 to 1971 and again from 1987 to 1988.

The announcement almost came too late; hours later, a disgruntled officer went on the radio to announce Kenneth Kaunda had been overthrown.

Kenneth Kaunda tried to mollify the opposition by moving the referendum to August 1991; the opposition claimed the original date did not allow enough time for voter registration.

Kenneth Kaunda cancelled the referendum, and instead recommended constitutional amendments that would dismantle UNIP's monopoly on power.

Kenneth Kaunda announced a snap general election for the following year, two years before it was due.

One of the issues in the campaign was a plan by Kenneth Kaunda to turn over one-quarter of the nation's land to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian guru who promised that he would use it for a network of utopian agricultural enclaves that proponents said would create "Heaven on Earth".

Kenneth Kaunda was forced in a television interview to deny practising Transcendental Meditation.

When Kenneth Kaunda handed power to Chiluba on 2 November 1991, he became the second mainland African head of state to allow free multiparty elections and to relinquish power peacefully after he had lost.

Chiluba later attempted to deport Kenneth Kaunda on the grounds that he was a Malawian.

The MMD-dominated government under the leadership of Chiluba had the constitution amended, barring citizens with foreign parentage from standing for the presidency, to prevent Kenneth Kaunda from contesting the next elections in 1996, in which he planned to participate.

In 1999 Kenneth Kaunda was declared stateless by the Ndola High Court in a judgment delivered by Justice Chalendo Sakala.

On 4 June 1998, Kenneth Kaunda announced that he was resigning as United National Independence Party leader and retiring from politics.

One of Kenneth Kaunda's children was claimed by the pandemic in the 1980s.

In September 2019, Kenneth Kaunda said that it was regrettable that the late president Robert Mugabe was maligned and subjected to mudslinging by some sections of the world, who were against his crusade of bringing social justice and equity to Zimbabwe.

Kenneth Kaunda married Betty Banda in 1946, with whom he had eight children.

Kenneth Kaunda died on 19 September 2012, aged 84, while visiting one of their daughters in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Since Kenneth Kaunda was known to wear a safari suit constantly, the safari suit is still commonly referred to as a "Kaunda suit" throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Kenneth Kaunda wrote music about the independence he hoped to achieve, although only one song has been known to many Zambians.

On 14 June 2021, Kenneth Kaunda was admitted to Maina Soko Military Hospital in Lusaka to be treated for an undisclosed medical condition.

Kenneth Kaunda was survived by 30 grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

Kenneth Kaunda attributed his longevity to a strict lacto-vegetarian diet and commented that "I don't take meat, no eggs, no chicken, I only eat vegetables like an elephant".

Kenneth Kaunda avoided alcohol and gave up drinking tea in 1953.