Zambian Independence
Northern Rhodesia became Zambia on 24 October 1964, with the copper that had paid for its neighbour's development. The territory had been administered by Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company until 1924 on the strength of concessions obtained from Lozi and other rulers, and the copper belt discovered in the 1920s made it one of the most valuable colonies in Africa. The revenues went substantially to the company, to the mining houses, and after 1953 to Salisbury. The Central African Federation of that year joined Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and was understood by Africans in all three as a device to extend white settler control northward; Northern Rhodesian copper funded the Kariba dam and the development of Southern Rhodesia. Kenneth Kaunda broke from the older national congress in 1958 over its willingness to fight elections on a restricted franchise, was imprisoned, and led a campaign of civil disobedience called Cha-cha-cha in 1961 that made the territory ungovernable. The federation was dissolved at the end of 1963. Zambia inherited about a hundred university graduates, a landlocked position, and a railway line running through Rhodesia to the sea. Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia the following year closed that route, and Kaunda supported the liberation movements of every neighbour at considerable cost — Rhodesian and South African raids, and an economy dependent on a single commodity whose price collapsed in the 1970s. He governed as a one-party state and lost an election in 1991 and accepted it. The Tanzam railway, built with Chinese money and labour between 1970 and 1975 to reach the sea through Tanzania, is the physical answer to the geography. It is also the first large Chinese infrastructure project in Africa, half a century before the phrase belt and road existed.
- Year: 1964 CE
- Category: Political
