GROWING up on the Copperbelt in the pre-independence days was great fun for most youths because of the social welfare centres or youth clubs mine and municipal council managements introduced to combat social problems like juvenile delinquency in African townships.
These centres at which football, badminton, ‘ping-pong’ (table tennis), lawn tennis, basketball, baseball, softball, hockey, and volleyball facilities were available, also served as recruitment zones for political parties, especially after former African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Kenneth Kaunda and his supporters broke away from Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula to form the Zambia African National Congress (ZANC) in 1958.
Following the split, some of us became members of the UNIP youth brigade, while others remained ANC youth wing activists.
Our social club, Buseko Youth Club – one of the many designed to keep miners’ children off the streets – was located in Section Eight next to an open space opposite the Mufulira Copper Mine’s slug-dump site.
This part of the Section Eight mine township was the venue of one of the biggest political rallies ever in the Mufulira district as a whole.
A few months after UNIP swept to power in 1964, disgruntled miners (probably expecting but not reaping immediate fruits of independence) went on a wildcat strike, bringing copper production, the economic mainstay of the new state, to a standstill.
It was like a stab in the back for Dr Kaunda and his lieutenants who had sacrificed so much to free Africans from colonial bondage and racism.
Faced with this crisis, probably the first major test for the African leaders who had just supplanted their colonial bosses in Lusaka, a high-powered team of Cabinet ministers and unionists was dispatched to the Copperbelt to pacify the angry miners and urge them to return to work.
Since the venue was just next to our club, we found ourselves at the meeting.
The atmosphere was tense and, not unexpectedly, riot police from Kamfinsa Mobile Police Unit in Kitwe, ringed the place, ready to pounce in case of trouble.
Miners were simply uncontrollable and downright rude, jeering and shouting down every leader called to the podium to address them.
I remember some of the leaders present were Justin Chimba, Dingiswayo Banda, Aaron Milner and Sikota Wina, who was introduced as the “UNIP Cowboy” because, I later came to learn, he had pursued his degree studies in California (which miners knew from Western films, as the home of American cowboys).
When it was his turn to address the gathering, Mr Wina tried to explain that some of them (leaders) had broken away from Mr Nkumbula’s ANC to form their party because they were eager to fight for better pay and improved conditions of service for all Zambian workers.
But instead of applauding and cheering, the independence hero, the irate miners shouted, saying “we don’t want UNIP cowboys here; we want money”.
Undeterred Mr Wina tried to convince the strikers that UNIP would better their salaries and wages, which would have been impossible under Mr Nkumbula who behaved like a member of the ‘Fabian Society’.
I remember this aspect of his address because I had a friend called Fabian but did not know there was such a thing as Fabianism; so I still wonder if most of the listeners got the gist of his message.
(The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 in England with the conviction that “social change could be brought about by gradual” parliamentary means.
The name is derived from Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman general nicknamed ‘Cunctator’, the delayer who achieved his successes in defending Rome against Hannibal by refusing to give direct battle).
In other words Mr Wina was trying to tell the ‘rebellious’ miners that their strike action was totally unwarranted because, unlike Mr Nkumbula, whowas happy to wait as long as it takes (to remove the colonialists from power), UNIP leaders, led by Dr Kaunda, had fought hard to achieve independence with the principal objective of improving the lives of the people after decades of exploitation.
However, the cause of the split between KK and Nkumbula becomes clear in a story as told by Foster Mubanga, a member of the UNIP Women’s Brigade who attended a meeting in Mikomfwa Township in Luanshya at which Dr Kaunda and other leaders were introduced to the audience by district chairman Pickson Chi tambala. Dr Kaunda was still secretary to Mr Nkumbula at the time.
Dr Kaunda was asked to explain to the local leaders and by extension to the rest of the people, what had transpired when he and Mr Nkumbula were in England.
According to Peter Harries-Jones’ Freedom and Labour (Mobilisation and Political Control on the Zambian Copperbelt), Kaunda reported that, “it was disgraceful as our leader, Mr Nkumbula had done nothing.
“When I called on him and said: ‘Old man what shall we say to the English MPs?’ He (Nkumbula) always said to me: ‘No, my dear chap, I know, I know what I am doing. At this time Mr Nkumbula was given a White woman to wait on him. Can anyone imagine being given a woman with white eyes (namenso ayabuta), i.e. a bright-eyed woman, her face made up with cosmetics) to wait on you – her bed within two feet of yours?
“From our arrival in England he never left this White woman. I was cross with him and said: ’Old man, I want to return to Northern Rhodesia because our people think they sent us here to represent them on political matters, but you are preoccupied with women and liquor.”
Was this fair, countrymen? This is now the fourth time (I have advised him about his behaviour). I am fed up with advising the old man when he won’t listen. I am appealing to you countrymen, where can such a person take you?”
Mubanga is quoted as saying, “We answered back and told him (KK): ‘We think he is taking us to an abyss. Then he (Kaunda) told us: ‘Do you think that he should continue as your leader?
I have come to inform you about what happens when we go abroad. Don’t expect us to bring home anything (in the way of political improvement).
Nothing happens at all. He is preoccupied with beer and women. You know, everyone, that it is not an easy thing to get anything out of the Europeans. They know at the moment that we Africans are waking up (so they have decided) “what we will do is this – let us give them (African leaders) women and when they see White women they won’t do anything”’.
Kaunda did not accept this type of behaviour.
According to Foster Mubanga, Dr Kaunda tried to persuade the old man to mend his ways upon which Nkumbula said, ‘This place is good. No my dear chap, you are a very peculiar man. If you want you can go ahead and I will wait a little while’. Kaunda said:
He (Nkumbula) said all this because he had a woman beside him. After all this, I bade him good-bye and came back.’
“’This countrymen was the sum total of our movement (twaendele uko twaile). Tell me everyone, would you like a leader who behaves this way?’
We said: ‘No, no, we don’t want him’. Then Dr Kaunda said that they had formed a new organisation called Zambia and Mr Kaunda was to be our leader. We were thankful for this small organisation and thought perhaps it might bring us to freedom.”
Many at the rally accepted the new organisation, while others did not accept it, insisting that “the pot is still on the boil”.
Accompanying Dr Kaunda when he addressed a rally at Mikomfwa were, among others, Mr Simon Kapwepwe, Mr Sikota Wina, Mr Munukayumbwa Sipalo, Mr Arthur Wina, Mr Nalumino Mundia, and Mr Frank Chitambala.
Meanwhile, Mr Mainza Chona is the one who announced to the rest of the country that ‘Zambia´, which had been proscribed, had been renamed UNIP.
The new organisation went on to contest the first multiparty elections involving the ANC and the white-dominated United Federal Party (UFP), which were the major parties then.
However, and much to his credit, it was ‘Old Harry’ – the brick that the builders had rejected, as the Bible says – who became the cornerstone of the building.
Despite the humiliation he had been subjected to, Nkumbula displayed unprecedented magnanimity by agreeing when approached by Kaunda to combine ANC’s seven (7) seats and UNIP’s 14 seats and form a coalition government, thus putting Zambia firmly on the road to Independence on October 24, 1964.
Comments: silapress@yahoo.com/alfredmulenga777@gmail.com
