Go to your favorite bookstore or your local library. Find the African Studies section and peruse the titles, skim through a few pages - there is a good chance that you will not see Zambia mentioned very often. This is probably because among the 56 countries that comprise the continent, Zambia does not stand out as particularly dramatic. It is not a glittering banner of wealth or a cautionary tale of violence and corruption. It has boasted of no underdog comebacks, like Uganda has since the bloody rules of Obote and Amin; it has suffered no ethnic genocides like those of Rwanda and Sudan; it has not served as a personal fiefdom to larger-than-life tyrants like Mobutu and Mugabe; it lacks the postcard appeal of a Moroccan bazaar or a Kenyan safari. Zambia rarely makes the newspaper; rarer still the front page. It has been - as far as the world is concerned - unexciting. But this apparent blah fails to tell the real story of Zambia.
Zambia has much in which to take pride, going back at least to when it was still a backwater colony known as Northern Rhodesia. Most of Africa had been colonized in the 19th century by competing European empires. Northern Rhodesia, on the other hand, was colonized by mining interests originating in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. By the middle of the 20th century, in the wake of two devastating world wars, Europe had neither the resources nor the will to cling to African colonies that were agitating for independence. The mining companies, however, began to depend more and more upon the copper wealth coming from their northern colony. While many African nations were able to break from their former colonial masters in the 1960s with a blessing or, at worst, with ambivalence, white Afrikaaner business interests held jealously to their claims. And besides the fact that Southern Rhodesia was unwilling to let go of Northern Rhodesia, everything Northern Rhodesia depended upon for its economic stability - trade routes, mine ownership, energy - was based south of its border. When Zambians fought for independence, they did so in the sobering knowledge that they would be starting from scratch next door to a bitter and antagonistic neighbor.
Against these odds, Zambians did the impossible - after engaging in peaceful protests and legislative battles, they gained independence in 1964 without shedding any blood. (Southern Rhodesia, by contrast, descended into a decade of brutal civil war before emerging as Zimbabwe under the tyranny of Robert Mugabe; South Africa, also under white rule, would not gain majority representation for another 30 years.)
Besides successfully gaining its own independence, the young nation of Zambia became a beacon of hope to its neighbors also struggling for self-determination. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia's first president and one of independent Africa's Founding Fathers, was a philosopher by disposition. For better or worse, aspirations for a free Africa often trumped practical needs for development and security at home. Freedom fighters from around the continent found refuge in the open arms of Kaunda's Zambia. Nelson Mandela is said to have affectionately called Zambia his "second home" - he made frequent escapes to Zambia before finally being caught and imprisoned.
Though the early years had held promise for the idealistic young nation, the 1970s and 80s saw much difficulty. Plummeting commodity prices and poor financial management in these decades sent Zambia, like much of Africa, into a freefall. Competing voices and hand-outs from the West and from the Soviet Union kept the government distracted and off-balance, when they should have been listening to their own people. Sadly, voices for progress and reform were stifled by the increasingly autocratic Kaunda, the very man who had fought for his people's freedom just a few years hence. In 1991, after years of tension, violent protests forced the ruling UNIP party to open a multi-party election, in which it lost overwhelmingly.
Prospects have improved for Zambia in the last 20 years. A responsible democratic government has provided the necessary conditions for stability and growth, while a rise in copper prices over the last five years has driven that growth. There is, of course, a long way to go. Two out of three people in Zambia still live below the poverty line. The AIDS epidemic, which hit southern Africa particularly hard, has wiped out much of a generation. But as AIDS is slowly but surely defeated, and as opportunity is spread throughout the cities and the villages, Zambia will be able to continue resolutely on the hopeful path it set out on nearly 50 years ago.
