SNAPSHOT IN HISTORY – ZAMBIA AND TRIBAL POLITICS 1971
KAUNDA SEEKING TO END TRIBALISM IN ZAMBIAN POLITICS
By Charles Mohr
Special to The New York Times
May 26, 1971
LUSAKA, Zambia, May 19— President Kenneth D. Kaunda has moved vigorously to silence what he calls the “dirty and cheap tribal Mafias” that have brought four years of intense political infighting to this Central African nation.
Mr. Kaunda’s solution was the drastic one of strongly dis couraging open competition within the ranks of his ruling United National Independence party. Such competition had tended to divide the party into quarreling, hostile ethnic blocs.
This month the President convened an important party conference at rural Mulungushi. At his urging the delegates adopted a new party constitution that eliminated the position of deputy party leader—and thus removed a major incentive for political fratricide.
The delegates also elected, without opposition, a new central committee and extended its term of office from three to five years so as to give the country as much breathing space as possible. In the past there had been heated contests for committee posts.
Justin Henry Chimba, the Minister of National Guidance, who had charged that his tribe was being persecuted, was removed from the central committee.
Optimism Expressed
In an interview, the 46‐year‐ old Mr. Kaunda said he now believed “we have the opportunity of getting over this problem of tribalism in the future.”
It was one of the few optimistic remarks the President has made on the subject in recent years. Not long ago he had warned that ethnic politics could “drag Zambia down the drain of anarchy and blood shed.”
And in his opening address at the party conference he said: “Some historians will no doubt record that instability and mud slinging dominated political activity during the period since 1967.”
Zambia’s population includes 73 tribes, most of them miniscule in size, that are grouped into half a dozen language groups. The lack of clear numerical superiority for any one group did not prevent the emergence of tribal politics but simply caused it to take the form of coalition‐building.
Tribalism in politics is wide spread in Africa. The unusual thing about Zambia’s case is the frankness with which her leaders have admitted the existence of the problem.
Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia, gained independence from British colonial rule in October of 1964. The land locked, butterfly‐shaped country has only slightly more than four million people. But, in continent of still weak and small nations, it has a position of central importance.
Big Producer of Copper
It is the world’s third largest producer of copper, and the mines have brought unusual wealth as well as creating un usually large gaps between pour peasants and well‐paid urban workers.
Surrounded to the south and on the flanks by Rhodesia and the Portuguese territories of Mozambique and Angola, Zambia is Black Africa’s strategic frontier outpost nestled against the white‐ruled areas of southern Africa.
Mr. Kaunda himself has become an increasingly important voice in the politics of the non aligned world. In domestic affairs, however, Zambia has had no problem more persistent or difficult than that of tribalism.
The weak but vociferous African National Congress party, an opposition group, has been able to hold on to about 20 percent of the seats in Parliament although it has no patronage and few political assets. The reason is that it can always count on the ethnic support of several southern tribes that have not wavered in their stubborn loyalty.
But tribalism is at least as intense within President Kaunda’s own dominating United National Independence party.
Mr. Kaunda himself has been impervious to tribal prejudices, partly because of an accident of birth. Although he was born in what is now Zambia, his father was from neighboring, Nyasaland (now Malawi) and Mr. Kaunda belongs to no local tribe.
President Concedes Error
Discusing tribal politics in the interview, the President said: “It was my fault in many ways.”
Mr. Kaunda was empowered by the national Constitution to handpick his own Vice President but, eager to promote democracy, he decided prior to conference of his party in 1967 that the man elected deputy party leader would be installed in the Vice Presidency—a decision he now calls “a clear mistake.”
At the 1967 conference the Bemba language speakers, who comprise about 35 per cent of the population and are the largest linguistic group, moved with unexpected skill to form an alliance with some other tribal groups to elect a Bemba, Simon Kapwepwe, the deputy leader and thus Vice President.
The conference almost ended in violence and many Zambians were shocked by the conniving, insults and disorder that had occurred.
Politicians from other tribal groups were at first stunned, but quickly began to work to demolish the new Bemba power. With considerable speed they dismantled the alliance that had brought Mr. Kapwepwe into office.
Vice President Loses Post
The Bembas seemed demoralized and shocked by the sudden turn of fortunes and the growing solidarity against them. Mr. Kapwepwe offered his resignation in 1969, saying that his fellow tribesmen were being persecuted, and by 1970 he had been eased out of the Vice Presidency and into the Ministry of Local Government.
Conflict persisted, however. Secret party committees were formed and met clandestinely to find ways to harass and discredit one another.
To an extent difficult to measure, this strife hampered orderly administration of government. Many observers think it hampered development and planning. There seems no question that it led to nepotism and insecurity in the public service.
President Kaunda, whose hair has become specked with gray, said this year so much time had been wasted on political backstabbing that it was “impossible for some leaders to spend as much as two hours out of eight a day discharging the responsibilities of their office.”
Violent Outbreaks Feared
The main fear, however, was not so much that tribalism hampered good government as that it might erupt into outright violence if left unchecked. At one point Mr. Kapwepwe faced the prospect of precipitating violence if ever he tried to speak in one section of the nation.
Late last year the temperature rose again when Bembas charged that several cabinet ministers were being shielded from prosecution for corruption because of tribal favoritism. In a lurid footnote they accused one non‐Bemba of having raped his secretary. Above all, they said that Bembas were being subjected to discrimination.
Mr. Kaunda suspended one Bemba, Mr. Chimba, from office and then flatly told high officials to stop attacking one another.
“During the past seven years since Independence, I have watched with dismay some leadership shortcomings on the part of some of my colleagues,” he said “That period has now come to an end. From now on there is no such thing as a tribal leader.”
The power of the Presidency in African countries is hard to exaggerate, and Mr. Kaunda has commanding national popularity. And much of the public has seemed as disgusted as he has been with the constant conflict.
Even so, most observers were surprised at the docility with which the warring factions accepted the President’s decision to muzzle them at this month’s party congress.
But by merely prohibiting political competition he may not have uprooted the emotions and ambitions that fed it. The Times of Zambia, which is politically nonaffiliated, called the conference a clear success but added: “There are cynics who may feel, and some of them would have good reasons, that the abrupt ending of the conference only postponed a day of reckoning which is bound to or later.”
Mr. Kaunda said in the interview that he felt he must now move quietly to promote men “in whom I see trends that are national and not sectional.”
“If I don’t leave a leadership acceptable to all the people of Zambia, I will be a failure,” he said.
