Zambia’s former president and one of Africa’s liberation giants, Kenneth Kaunda has died on Thursday following a struggle with pneumonia. He was aged 97.
His son, Kambarage Kaunda announced his father’s death via a post on his Facebook page.
“Dear members,” he wrote, “I’m sad to inform, we have lost ‘Mzee’. Let’s pray for him.”
Cabinet secretary Simon Miti said in an address on public television that Kaunda “died peacefully” at 2:30 pm (1230 GMT) at a military hospital where he had been admitted on Monday with pneumonia.
Kaunda who ruled the Southern African country for 27 years was admitted to hospital on Monday. He took the helm after the country gained independence from Britain in October 1964.
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In a terse statement, Kaunda’s office said he was “unwell and was admitted to… Maina Soko Medical Centre,” a military hospital in the capital Lusaka.
Initially a popular leader, Kaunda became increasingly autocratic and banned all opposition parties.
He eventually ceded power in the first multi-party elections in 1991, losing to trade unionist Fredrick Chiluba.
While in power he hosted many of the movements fighting for independence or black equality in other countries around the region, including South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC).
Later in life, he regained stature as one of Africa’s political giants, helping to mediate crises in Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Affectionately known as “KK”, Kaunda was the head of the main nationalist party, the left-of-centre United National Independence Party (UNIP).
Kaunda also became an AIDS campaigner, announcing publicly one of his sons had died from the illness.
Also nicknamed “Africa’s Gandhi” for his non-violent, independence-related activism in the 1960s, he charmed mourners at Nelson Mandela’s burial in December 2013.
When organisers attempted to usher him away from the podium after he ran over his allotted time, he drew laughs by saying they were “trying to control an old man who fought the Boers”, or Afrikaners — the white descendants of South Africa’s first Dutch settlers.
