Maggs Bros.

Kenneth Kaunda (1924-2021) came to prominence as the leader of Northern Rhodesia’s United National Independence Party. His parents were both Bemba and his father, an ordained Church of Scotland missionary, died when Kaunda was just a child. His mother proved quite the role model, being the first African woman to teach in colonial Northern Rhodesia. Kenneth followed suit and attended the Munali Training Centre in Lusaka.

His political career commenced in 1949 with the founding of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress. Four years later he was appointed Secretary General of the Africa National Congress (ANC). Prison soon followed, a two-month stint for distributing subversive literature. In 1958, Kaunda broke away from the ANC and founded the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC). The organisation was promptly banned and Kaunda was sentenced to another nine months in jail. In 1960 he met with Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta and the next year commenced a civil disobedience campaign in the northern province. As a member of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), he ran in the 1962 elections and a joint UNIP-ANC coalition government was formed. Kaunda served as the Minister of Local Government and Social Welfare. The next election, in 1964, proved an outright victory for UNIP and so Kaunda became the first President of an independent Zambia.

He remained in power until 1991, presiding over a government which proved increasingly authoritarian.

This autobiographical work, covering his childhood and political development, was published on the eve of Zambian independence.