The electoral transition went smoothly, but what followed did not. Mr. Chiluba began portraying his predecessor as a dictator who devastated the country, blaming him for Zambia’s economic problems. Offended, Mr. Kaunda returned to politics to run against Mr. Chiluba in 1996. But Mr. Chiluba was able to block Mr. Kaunda’s candidacy in the courts. Then, in 1997, when Mr. Kaunda was on his way to a political rally, gunmen opened fire on his car, injuring him – a bullet hit his forehead – and a party worker. Mr. Kaunda told reporters that he had been warned that those in power had assassinated him.
Later that same year, several junior officers launched a three-hour disturbance in which the government accused Mr. Kaunda of ordering an attempted coup. He was placed under house arrest. The charges were dropped after several months, but in March 1999 Zambia’s highest court ruled in a case brought by Mr Chiluba’s government under the citizenship laws introduced in 1996, stripping Mr Kaunda of his citizenship, saying he was not entitled to it because his parents were born in Nyasaland, It is a British protectorate now known as Malawi. The authorities threatened to deport him.
Their threat was ultimately not carried out, but the court ruling effectively disqualified Mr Kaunda from running for another presidential election, which was restricted to citizens whose parents were born within Zambia’s borders.
His torment did not end there.
In November of that year, Four gunmen were shot dead His 47-year-old son Wezi in the driveway of his home in Lusaka. A retired military major, Mr. Kaunda the Younger was a rising figure in his father’s opposition United National Independence Party. The authorities described the incident as a car theft, but many suspected an assassination.
lion running away
Kenneth David Kaunda was born on April 28, 1924, in a mission of the Church of Scotland in the northern part of what was then Northern Rhodesia. His father David was ordained in the church and worked in the mission as a teacher. His mother, Helen (Nirenda) Kaunda, was one of the first African teachers in the area.
Kenneth, the youngest of six surviving children, was born in the 20th year of his parents’ marriage. They called him Buchizya, or “The Unexpected.”
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