The Lion King | 25
Notable Personality
Kalambo Falls
Kalambo Falls on Kalambo River is
in Northern Province on the border
of Tanzania and Zambia. It is a
221m drop down into the gorge
and flows into Lake Tanganyika.
This is the second highest waterfall
in Africa, about double the height
of the Victoria Falls, and about the
12th highest in the world.
On either side of the Falls there
are sheer rock walls, and a large
colony of marabou storks breed in
the cliffs during the dry season. The
Falls themselves will be at their most
spectacular towards the end of the
wet season, in February or March,
but worth visiting in any month.
Kenneth David Kaunda, also known as KK,
was born on 28 April 1924 and served as
the first republican president of Zambia
from 1964 to 1991.
Kaunda is the youngest of eight children
born to an ordained missionary and
teacher. He was at the forefront of the
struggle for independence from British rule.
Dissatisfied with Nkumbula's leadership of
the African National Congress, he broke
away and founded the Zambian Na-
tional African Congress, later becom-
ing the head of the United National
Independence Party. He was the first
President of independent Zambia.
Similar to other emergent civic leaders
of his generation, Kaunda was educat-
ed in mission schools (his father was a
missionary), became a teacher, served
on a local council, and plunged into
nationalist politics.
In 1950 he was secretary of his
branch of the Northern Rho-
desia African Congress;
by 1953 he was Secre-
tary-G eneral of the Af-
rican National Congress
(ANC). He served a brief term in prison for a
political offense, visited Britain as a guest of
the anticolonialist Labour Party, and broke
away from the ANC in 1958.
The politics of the era was dominated by
the Southern Rhodesian whites and the
British government’s attempt to form a
Central African Federation. Resistance to
the federation resulted in another prison
term for Kaunda and then to the formation
of the United National Independence Party
(UNIP) that delivered independence in
1964 to an ultimately unfederated Northern
Rhodesia.
From 1968, all political parties except UNIP,
were banned. At the same time, Kaunda
oversaw the acquisition of majority stakes
in key foreign-owned companies. The oil
crisis of 1973 and a slump in export reve-
nues plunged Zambia into economic crisis.
At the peak of his activism, Kenneth Kau-
nda threatened to 'paralyse' the colonial
government, unless the new constitution
was changed. He called for peaceful
protests, but there were violent uprisings in
the run up to Northern Rhodesia’s Inde-
pendence.
Kenneth Kaunda
Country Focus
Photo: Flickr/Mario R
