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| Title: | Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, UNIP and the roots of authoritarianism in nationalist Zambia |
| Author: | Macola, Giacomo |
| Book title: | One Zambia, many histories: towards a history of post-colonial Zambia |
| Year: | 2008 |
| Pages: | 17-44 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zambia |
| Subjects: | African National Congress (Zambia) United National Independence Party authoritarianism 1960-1969 |
| About person: | Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (c.1917-1983) |
| Abstract: | The First Republic in Zambia between 1964 and 1973 was marked by a reduction in tolerance of internal dissent and a general contraction of civil liberties. The author argues that this was in part a consequence of the rapid, widespread dissatisfaction caused by the inability of the ruling party to meet the popular expectations of independence. This essay argues that antecedents were to be found in the early 1960s, when UNIP (United National Independence Party) and the ANC (African National Congress of Northern Rhodesia, later Zambia) from which it had sprung became entangled in a vicious struggle for power and pre-eminence. Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula had been very much the public face of nationalism in Northern Rhodesia until the late 1950s when he was gradually displaced by up-and-coming younger people rebelling against his increasingly autocratic attitude. Examining the ideology and activities of Henry Nkumbula and his ANC, this essay makes an attempt to move away from the traditionally UNIP-dominated narrative of the political changes in late colonial Northern Rhodesia. The analysis of Nkumbula's career after the emergence of UNIP illuminates important traits in Zambian national culture and the author contends that these exerted an enormous influence on the nature of postcolonial politics. The ideological apparatus which would later lead to the foundation of the one-party State was first manifested in the ANC-UNIP conflict of 1959-1964. Nkumbula was denied the right to full political citizenship and intellectual equivalence was asserted between party and national membership. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
