By Kombe Mataka
HISTORIAN Sishuwa Sishuwa says the Southern Africa region and indeed Africa is facing a huge leadership deficit.
And former Mozambiquan President Joaquim Chissano said Dr Kenneth Kaunda was the hero of the liberation struggle.
Dr Sishuwa, a University of Zambia lecturer, said current happenings on the continent were evidence of a total lack of the Pan African spirit of the Kaunda generation who envisioned an Africa free of colonial rule.
“Today, Kaunda and (Julius) Nyerere are gone. In their place is a new cadre of political leaders without any iota of nationalism in their veins and who have lost any desire to re-build the developmental state
and to identify and mobilise the social forces capable of leading the struggle for renewal and transformation such as the working-class youths from both our urban and rural social environments,’’ he told the colloquium of academicians held at Lusaka’s Mulungushi
International Conference Centre on Wednesday ahead of the inaugural Kenneth Kaunda memorial
lecture by former South Africa president Thabo Mbeki. ‘’Today, the region and indeed Africa face a huge leadership deficit. Where there was a Kaunda, a Nyerere, a Nkrumah, an Obote, a Kenyatta, a Sankara, a Mugabe, a Mbeki, a Senghor – in short, pan-African visionaries who governed through their own distinctive political and economic philosophies – there is now something else. To be specific, there is a new breed of leaders that is only too happy to receive and implement all manner of instructions in economic policy from the G7 and its surrogates. Totally lacking the pan African spirit of the
Kaunda generation, this new generation of leaders has effectively relinquished their countries’ economic direction to the so-called private sector, falsely believing that what will facilitate investment
and development is the investor from China, Canada, the EU, and the United States.”
Dr Sishua observed that the distance between them and the nationalist generation and the current leadership of Africa was far and wide.
“I celebrate Kaunda not only for believing that we Africans are full human beings capable of owning and managing our own part of the earth but also showing greater understanding, despite his limited education, that those who come here with their investment have no obligation to develop our country.,” Dr Sishuwa said. “They are doing it for themselves and their own countries and in the
process pushing us further down. We must neither subordinate our minds to others in ways that suggest that we Africans are inferior nor give
away our natural resources through poor economic policies that perpetuate our own degrading conditions. Yes, Africa must work with others and more importantly learn — from itself and its history, from China, the US, Europe, etc. But those lessons should never be the ones prescribed to us by global powers.”
He said leaders must resist the subordination of national agendas and priorities to outside forces.
“Instead, we must draw from the wealth of our distinct and accumulated experiences to chart a clear course for ourselves. I acknowledge that this won’t be easy. Today, it is almost impossible to find or identify a single African leader who is pan Africanist. The mass progressive movements of the earlier decades – be they political parties, youth,
women, or students’ organisations – are either dead, dysfunctional or lack a clear Africa policy, while the continental body, the African Union, appears to have lost direction,” he said further. “But our leaders must rebuild its resistance again. To do that, they must see the actual dangers posed by the US, European countries, and China, in the same way that we should have seen the seemingly innocuous arrival of David Livingstone as a hazard. We now have the experience to learn and respond better. As we do so, we must remember Thabo Mbeki’s warning: ‘We must free ourselves of the ‘friends’ who populate our ranks, originating from the world of the rich, who come to us, perhaps dressed in jeans and T-shirts, as advisers and consultants, while we end up as the voice that gives popular legitimacy to decisions we neither made, nor intended to make, which our ‘friends’ made for us, taking advantage of an admission that perhaps we are not sufficiently educated’.”
Dr Sishuwa described Dr Kaunda as a progressive nationalist.
“Nationalism is used here to refer to a process that restores the human being to the earth (the land, minerals, fauna, vegetation, everything that produces that human bring). Such a process culminated in the creation of not only a multi-ethnic nation but also the developmental state that provided for citizens and is now on its way
Out, thanks to the crafty efforts of those who seek and stand to benefit from the absence of such a state,” said Dr Sishuwa. “Whatever the critics say, the truth is that the developmental state was central to the significant gains that Kaunda and his colleagues recorded in different social sectors in the first decade of independence. It was as if Kaunda’s vision on the role and commitment of the state to development was spurred by the words of his mentor Julius Nyerere who once said, and I quote: ‘Don’t listen to this nonsense that the state should give up the direction of the economy. It’s nonsensical. And we have so many stupid leaders who think that somehow you can hand over the development of your country to something called ‘private enterprise unregulated’.’’
And Chisanno who served Mozambique from 1986 to 2005 said Dr Kaunda wanted to see an end to colonialism.
He said the support that Dr Kaunda gave to Mozambique and Zimbabwe in the 1970s proved crucial in bringing white minority rule to an end.
“President Kaunda thought if we change our posture, ‘we are betraying our belief. Our belief is that we cannot be independent without the independence of Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Namibia. We have to fight’,’’ said Chisanno. ‘’President Kaunda built here, the liberation centre where each liberation movement had an office. That
liberation centre was later destroyed by the Ian Smith air raids,”
Dr Kaunda Kaunda, who led the country for 27 years, died on June 17, 2021 at Maina Soko Military Hospital where he was being treated for pneumonia.
During his 30 years as former president Dr Kaunda engaged in advocacy against poverty and HIV/AIDs.