Resource 2: Two histories of Zambia

Teacher resource for planning or adapting to use with pupils

Account 1

Early history to the 19th century

Some Bantu-speaking peoples (probably including the ancestors of the Tonga) reached the region by c. ad 800, but the ancestors of most of modern Zambia's ethnic groups arrived from present-day Angola and Congo (Kinshasa) between the 16th and 18th centuries. By the late 18th century, traders (including Arabs, Swahili, and other Africans) had penetrated the region from both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts; they exported copper, wax and slaves. In 1835, the Ngoni, a warlike group from South Africa, entered eastern Zambia. At about the same time, the Kololo penetrated western Zambia from the south, and they ruled the Lozi kingdom of Barotseland.

The colonial period

The Scottish explorer David Livingstone [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] first came to the area that is now Zambia in 1851; he visited Victoria Falls in 1855, and in 1873 he died near Lake Bangweulu. In 1890, agents of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company signed treaties with several African leaders, including Lewanika, the Lozi king, and proceeded to administer the region. The area was divided into the protectorates of Northwestern and Northeastern Rhodesia until 1911, when the two were joined to form Northern Rhodesia.

The mining of copper and lead began in the early 1900s. By 1909, the central railroad from Livingstone to Ndola had been completed and about 1,500 Europeans had settled in the country. In 1924, the British took over the administration of the protectorate. In the late 1920s extensive copper deposits were discovered in what soon became known as the Copperbelt, and by the late 1930s, about 4,000 European skilled workers and some 20,000 African labourers were engaged there. The Africans protested the discrimination and ill treatment to which they were subjected by staging strikes in 1935, 1940 and 1956. They were not allowed to form unions but did organise self-help groups that brought together persons of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

In 1946, delegates from these groups met in Lusaka and formed the Federation of African Welfare Societies, the first protectorate-wide African movement; in 1948, this organisation was transformed into the Northern Rhodesia African Congress. In the early 1950s, under the leadership of Harry Nkumbula, it fought strenuously, if unsuccessfully, against the establishment of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953–63), which combined Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Nyasaland (now Malawi). The booming copper industry had attracted about 72,000 whites to Northern Rhodesia by 1958, and the blacks there experienced increasing white domination.

Independence and Kaunda

Kenneth Kaunda, a militant former schoolteacher, took over the leadership of the Africans from the more moderate Nkumbula and in 1959 formed a new party, the United National Independence Party (UNIP). Following a massive civil disobedience campaign in 1962, Africans were given a larger voice in the affairs of the protectorate.

On 24 October 1964, Northern Rhodesia became independent as the Republic of Zambia, with Kaunda as its first president; he was reelected in 1968 and 1973. The main problems faced by Kaunda in the first decade of independence were uniting Zambia's diverse peoples, reducing European control of the economy, and coping with white-dominated Southern Rhodesia (which unilaterally declared its independence as Rhodesia in November 1965).

Adapted from original source: http://www.onfoplease.com/ (Accessed 2008)

Account 2

In its early years, what is Zambia today had no recorded history. People moved around freely, establishing settlements where they could under the rule of African chiefs. Today, Zambia boasts some 70 ethnic groups scattered over the sparsely populated country. Arabs and whites, mostly from Britain, also relocated to Zambia over the years. The Arabs came in as traders and merchants, while the whites were missionaries, civil servants, commercial farmers, miners, adventurers and entrepreneurs. Over time, English became the official language used for business, government, commerce and schooling. The other major languages are Bemba, Lozi, Tonga and Nyanja.

The British South Africa Company ruled Northern Rhodesia from 1891 until 1923, The country's large mineral deposits were exploited at this time, boosting the country's white population and economic prospects. This mineral wealth in Zambia was one of the motivating factors in trying to form the Federation of Rhodesia (combining Southern and Northern Rhodesia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi). Under the federal structure, which came into being in 1953, despite vehement African opposition, the capital would be located in Salisbury (now Harare), the chief city in Southern Rhodesia. The federal legislature and the government would be in white-run Southern Rhodesia. Although whites were a miniscule minority in the Central African federation, they were the political majority in the federal government and federal parliament. Release of these details galvanised African nationalist leaders in Zambia and Malawi to mobilise to stop the federal idea from being implemented. Opposition from African nationalists in Southern Rhodesia was there, but it was not as vocal or strident as in the two northern territories. Whites in Malawi and Zambia favoured federation, as did their Southern Rhodesian counterparts, because it would augment their regional numbers and make it less likely that Zambia and Malawi could be turned over to the black majority.

Reluctantly, in 1962, the British government accepted Nyasaland's desire to opt out of the federation. At the local level, in 1948, two Africans were named to the Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council, which was the beginning of the recognition that blacks needed representation in the legislature. After negotiations among the Africans, the whites and the British government, a new constitution was agreed upon. It came into effect in 1962 and, for the first time, it was agreed that Africans would form the majority in the new Legislative Council.

On 31 December 1963, just ten years after its founding, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was declared dead. African nationalists had triumphed. After that, it was just a question of time before Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland would join most of the rest of Africa in the 1960s in winning majority rule and independence from European colonial rules. Less than a year after the federation's dissolution, Northern Rhodesia became the independent country of Zambia on 24 October 1964. The United National Independence Party (UNIP), successor to the banned Zambian African National Congress, won a majority of the seats under the new constitution. UNIP leader Kenneth David Kaunda became Zambia's democratically elected president. Soon, Kaunda and Zambia moved systematically to eliminate the opposition and turn the country into a one-party state, something that had become fashionable in Africa

Adapted from original source: http://www.pressconference.com/ Uz-Z/ Zambia.html (Accessed 2008)

Resource 1: Some important historical events since independence

Resource 3: Copperbelt strike