page_title: Kenneth Kaunda
section_title: Fall from power
hierarchical_section_title: Kenneth Kaunda / Fall from power
caption_attribution_description: English: President Kaunda of Zambia speaking in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), 15 april 1986
context_page_description: Kenneth David Kaunda, also known as KK, is a Zambian former politician who served as the first President of Zambia from 1964 to 1991.
  Kaunda is the youngest of eight children born to an ordained Church of Scotland missionary and teacher, an immigrant from Malawi. He was at the forefront of the struggle for independence from British rule. Dissatisfied with Harry Nkumbula's leadership of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, he broke away and founded the Zambian African National Congress, later becoming the head of the United National Independence Party. He was the first President of the independent Zambia. In 1973 following tribal and inter-party violence, all political parties except UNIP were banned through an amendment of the constitution after the signing of the Choma Declaration. 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 revenues put Zambia in a state of economic crisis. International pressure forced Kaunda to change the rules that had kept him in power.
context_section_description: Eventually, however, economic troubles and increasing international pressure to bring more democracy to Africa caused Kaunda to totter. While he had been known for his vehement opposition to apartheid in South Africa, his critics were increasingly emboldened to speak out against his authoritarian rule, and also questioned his competence. His close friend Julius Nyerere had retired as president of Tanzania in 1985 and was quietly encouraging Kaunda to follow suit.
  Matters quickly came to a head in the summer of 1990. In July, amid three days of rioting in the capital, Kaunda announced a referendum on whether to legalize other parties would be held that October. However, he himself argued for maintaining UNIP's monopoly, claiming that a multiparty system would lead to chaos. The announcement almost came too late; hours later, a disgruntled officer went on the radio to announce Kaunda had been overthrown. The coup attempt was broken three to four hours later, but it was clear Kaunda and the UNIP were reeling. Kaunda tried to mollify the opposition by moving the referendum to August 1991; the opposition claimed the original date didn't allow enough time for voter registration.
  While expressing willingness to have the Zambian people vote on a multiparty system, Kaunda maintained that only a one-party state could prevent tribalism and violence from engulfing the country. By September, however, opposition demands forced Kaunda to reverse course. He cancelled the referendum, and instead recommended constitutional amendments that would dismantle UNIP's monopoly on power. He also announced a snap general election for the following year, two years before they were due. He signed the necessary amendments into law in December.
  At these elections, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), helmed by trade union leader Frederick Chiluba, swept UNIP from power in a landslide. In the presidential election, Kaunda was roundly defeated, taking only 24 percent of the vote to Chiluba's 75 percent. UNIP was cut down to only 25 seats in the legislature. One of the issues in the campaign was a plan by 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". Kaunda was forced in a television interview to deny practising Transcendental Meditation. When 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 peacefully relinquish power when he lost. The first, Mathieu Kérékou of Benin, had done so in March of that year.
caption: Kaunda in Amsterdam, 1986
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