Sunday Mail misses the point on Frederick Chiluba, just like their bosses do on everything else

The state-owned Sunday Mail has come out with its own predictable spin on what should be learned by Zimbabwe from how the recently deceased former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba deposed 'founding father' Kenneth Kaunda . The upshot of the paper's take is that Zimbabweans should be wary of trading in old Robert Mugabe for a new model of politician like the Zambians did when they ditched Kaunda for Chiluba.


In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western governments were desperate for a winning strategy that would entrench their influence and safeguard their interests in Africa under the guise of promoting liberal democracy and free-market capitalism.

Former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba gave Western governments immense hope when he rode on the politics of “regime change” and, in 1991, dislodged the great Kenneth Kaunda who had been in power for 27 years. They had finally stumbled upon a formula which, in their imagination, would enable them to cleverly remove Africa’s liberation movements from power. 

Socialism and communism had to be stopped and the best way of doing so was to topple the liberation movements and replace them with a new breed of “democratic” governments willing to submit to Western demands. Chiluba’s rise to power changed African politics in ways that had never been seen before. Previously, Western governments would simply sponsor rebel movements in Africa and assign them to dislodge governments that had liberation credentials.     

Chiluba’s Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) — just like the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe —was formed with no defining philosophy or over  MMD was formed for one purpose: to topple Kaunda. Similarly, the MDC’s rallying cry in 1999 was unmistakable: our aim is to topple President Robert Mugabe. It was more of a protest movement than an political platform that proffered alternative solutions to the masses.

There is no doubt that an aggressive form of Western neocolonialism is on the loose in African, with the Ivory Coast and Libya as prime exhibits. But in both countries, despotic leaders who showed a callous contempt for the people they claimed to be in power to serve pushed significant segments of their populations to feel they had no option but to collaborate with foreign powers with their own interests and agendas. Where people who are agitating for nothing more than for their differing views of how their country should be run to be heard have to fear harassment, persecution and death from the ruling authority, it is not at all surprising that some decide to collude with mutual foes of their persecutors to seek change.   

Similarly in Zambia, Kaunda became a repressive despot, though arguably never one as mean-spirited and oppressive as Mugabe today. If some Western governments had their own reasons for wanting to see him gone, that became easier because Kaunda alienated so many of the Zambians who once universally adored him, including by decreeing a one-party state. Western governments didn't have to give Zambians any particular inducement for them to want to see Kaunda gone. Kaunda in his 27 years in power gave the Zambians plenty of reasons all by himself!

Besides, Kaunda at his most repressive was never  hostile to the West, even when he spouted his version of a rhetorical, Mugabe-style socialism that was not very different from that preached by some governing European parties of the time. Kaunda was not an ideological 'radical' in any sense that the West had to be worried about.

Kaunda lost to Chiluba fair and square after his 27 years in power because he failed to offer any convincing solutions for arresting and  reversing the economic slide the country was undergoing, and because of his worsening despotism.

Mugabe after 31 years at the helm of Zimbabwe is faced with similar challenges: an economy that is underperforming and dependent on food and other aid handouts from the same countries he says are Zimbabweans' enemies. And Mugabe has far more blood on his hands than Kaunda at his worst ever did.

What Mugabe has tragically done to himself is create the perfect breeding ground for any Western governments out to 'get him' to find many oppressed Zimbabweans who would cooperate with them. If some in the opposition movements are 'puppets' of foreign forces bent on 'regime change,' it is in large part because for so long Mugabe has constricted the space in which they can freely exercise their full political citizenship.         

The Sunday Mail says Chiluba's MMD was primarily a 'protest movement' with the sole purpose of deposing Kaunda; as Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC seeks to remove Mugabe from power. It (MDC) was more of a protest movement than a political platform that proffered alternative solutions to the masses.  

Yet these mere 'protest movements' without a plan, according to the Sunday Mail, were able to persuade a majority of the electorate to vote against the heroic, long-ruling nationalists! When a decades-long ruler with all the considerable advantages of incumbency and a repressive state machinery is outvoted by a protest movement, the lesson that neither the Sunday Mail, Kaunda or Mugabe want to accept is this: the people are not happy!

Instead the Sunday Mail exhibits precisely the same kind of contempt for voters to decide for themselves what they want as Kaunda and Mugabe. That is by suggesting that the fault for this anti-incumbent fever is not with the ruler who has lost the affection of his people, but that it is the people who have become confused and no longer know what they are doing! And yet when those voters were voting for Kaunda/Mugabe they were said to be wise and well informed.

Kaunda and Mugabe were/are incapable of introspectively saying, ''We were massively popular before and now have lost that support. Where have we gone wrong and how can we win it back?'' Their hubris and arrogance had them blame their loss of affection on the people who had changed their minds about them, rather than seeking to hear and address the reasons for the disaffection.  

Many Zambians got disillusioned with Chiluba when he began persecuting Kaunda. His decision to harass Zambia’s founding father was ill-advised, malicious and even suicidal in political terms. Africa strongly opposed the persecution of Kaunda, forcing Chiluba to relent. You have to understand that Kaunda is no small-time politician. Yes, he is the founder of the Zambian nation, but he is more than that — he is an international statesman, an African liberator.

If this is the Sunday Mail's way of preparing for decent treatment for Mugabe in the event he is turned out in an election, perhaps Mugabe should put a stop to the beatings, arrests and imprisonments on the flimsiest of excuses that have become routine in Zimbabwe for many years. Zimbabwe today for people who exercise their right to disagree with Mugabe & Co is a sad place full of a level of fear that never existed in Zambia at Kaunda's worst.

Kaunda and Mugabe were more respected as ''international statesman, African liberator'' outside their countries. Inside their countries the citizens had far more experience with not those noble qualities, but with these mens' baser instincts. Kaunda's government abused Chiluba when he was a trade union leader, as Mugabe's government has done to Tsvangirai when he led street protests that in a free country would be no big deal. There are a lot of Zimbabweans who will remember Mugabe far more for his abuses than for 'statesman, liberator' qualities. 

Chiluba did indeed turn out to be a huge disappointment for the Zambians. He quickly became associated with the kind of corruption that took longer to become a serious problem under the regimes of Kaunda or Mugabe. Just like Kaunda and Mugabe, he started off spouting sweet democracy talk before his true despotic colours began to show. As the Sunday Mail rightly mentions, many Zambians were alarmed at how he willy nilly sold off national assets in an aggressive privatisation campaign that won him Western plaudits but had little benefit for ordinary Zambians.

But the very process of voting in Chiluba, being disillusioned by him and then being able to vote him out was significant political growth for Zambia as a nation. The country experienced and internalised the lesson that politicians come and go; that they are supposed to and that it is right for the citizens to decide who goes and when. This is a fundamental part of the democracy that Mugabe says he embraces but that he does everything to make sure the voters have no real opportunity to exercise freely and without fear.       


Puzzled and wounded as Kaunda was by his rejection by Zambians, to his great credit when it was unequivocally expressed in an election, he finally left the political stage. Saving his country strife and allowing it to make the great leap forward of peaceful, democratic change of government actually made it possible for many Zambians to regain a lot of the respect they had lost for a once power-mad Kaunda; a respect he enjoys today.     


Zambia is on its fourth president now. Some have been better than others, as is entirely normal, but the Zambians know something that Zimbabweans are prevented from experiencing: that the sky does not fall when power passes from one person to another!

Speaking derisively of Chiluba's privatisations, the Sunday Mail sarcastically asks, Where does the government get the power to sell state-owned mines and parastatals for a song?

Yet the Sunday Mail overlooks that under Mugabe's economic 'management,' most Zimbabwean parastatals are on their knees. ZISCO, a previously wholly state-owned iron and steel company has just sold 60% equity to Indian investors for...a song! The minister in charge defended the deal by saying that the company was in such bad shape, was so indebted and needed such massive capitalisation that they felt a better offer would not have been forthcoming.

The state-owned 'national airline' Air Zimbabwe ''is in such shambles and its financial position so hopeless it would be difficult to find takers even if the government decided to offload it,'' a minister in Mr. Mugabe's government said last week.

In other words, Mugabe has left these state-owned companies in the kind of parlous, Kaunda-like state that they can only be sold for a song, if at all!

It is astonishing that the Sunday Mail put up such an unspirited, uninspired defence of the reign of Mugabe. I don't think any of these arguments will convince a majority of Zimbabweans that their yearning for change is misplaced, that they must instead stick with the tired old repressive regime that they know because the newcomers might be as bad or worse. Democracy includes taking that risk, as Zambians have done a number of times and survived. When the newcomers disappoint, kick them out and bring in new ones. That is how the kind of democracy that is formally in Zimbabwe's constitution is supposed to work if its letter and spirit were  not continually thwarted.  

The shallowness of the Sunday Mail's attempted proffering of reasons voters should not want change in Zimbabwe is indicative of how threadbare has become the argument for why 87 year old Mugabe should be taken seriously as having any useful new tricks up his sleeve, other than the main one of clinging on until death regardless of the misery all around him.

The Sunday Mail limps to an end with, ''the liberation movements have not done much to share notes and formulate practical strategies to thwart Western machinations.'' This is true, though for different reasons than those postulated by the paper. It is not 'Western machinations' that made Kaunda and Mugabe lose their gloss, but the arrogance of believing their people could only turn against them at a foreigner's instigation.

Instead of looking within with humility for the problem, it is to automatically assume the people who were once smart enough to vote for them have become dumb to want to vote for somebody else. Mugabe seems genuinely unable to comprehend the idea that a Zimbabwean would be repulsed by what he has become and want to vote for someone else, and that he should have the right to do so! ''No, it can't be their true sentiments, it must be my enemies who have confused the people to turn against me!''   

The resistance to free and fair elections by the Mugabe government is not because of how Western governments will somehow get into the heads of the voters to 'confuse' them to vote for change. The real fear is that the Mugabe government has by its own actions so turned off a majority of the electorate that they will willingly, happily do 'a Chiluba' on him. As is their democratic right to do.