No end of an era: Kenneth Kaunda is philosophically immortal

Richard Runyararo Mahomva, Pivot
The passing on of Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe on 6 September 2019 and the most recent departure of Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia has left ardent pan-Africanists and Afro-pessimists concluding that the decolonisation project has reached the end of an era.

This could be true considering the hallmark and inaugural liberation agenda initiated by these two pan-Africanist giants along aside luminaries like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau, Frantz Fanon of the then French colony of Martinique, Steve Bantu Biko of South-Africa.

These specific and deliberately mentioned decolonisation stalwarts were and are still instrumental in shaping the philosophical direction of African liberation. Outside the political roles which earned them global fame they served as crucial ideologues. Even as they are gone the present and future generations will harness parables of liberation for their lived contributions for African emancipation and unity.

The late founding father of modern Zambia Dr Kaunda introduced the idea of African humanism. African humanism served as a conceptual framing of the post-colonial direction to governance. This served as a logical prescriptive measure in dealing with the flaws of the inherited culture of colonial misrule.

Their African humanism stood in the place of political repression and challenged inhuman construct of power which characterised the colonial state.

Through his book, The African Humanist (1966), Kaunda proffered the need for Africans particularly Zambians to return to the African cultural human integrity values in giving loyalty to the national service. In the same perspective, the state also had the obligation to humanise power and the entire idea of governance.

Dr Kaunda saw the citizen as an agent of their nation’s development and that the individual was an active actor in the role of nation-building.

In recognising the African as a citizen and not a subject Dr Kaunda imposed a burden of responsibility to the formerly colonised to work for the development of their nations.

As a result, the concept of African humanism further posited that without citizen dedication the state would not survive. Therefore, the development of the African nation was strongly dependent of patriotic human service.

To Dr Kaunda state control was not defined in terms of organs of violence to enhance power monopoly. Instead, statecraft was to be founded on central basic African values namely mutual aid, trust, and loyalty to the community.

Through African humanism Dr Kaunda asserted a unique form of African democracy culture which valued the human being as a significant development asset of the nation.

He understood that the state was bestowed with the mandate of ensuring that the human actor within the power equation was valuable and that the state owed its respect to the human.

This further substantiates how African humanism makes servant leadership a practical feature of Kaunda’s imagination of power in Africa.

Moreover, in recognising the humanism of the African in particular, Dr Kaunda reaffirmed the restoration of African dignity following the centuries of slavery and colonialism which decimated the essence of the African being. Through African humanism Dr Kaunda also played a leading role in marshalling restorative nationalism which was aimed at dismantling the indignity which colonialism imposed of the African race.

The idea of African humanism recognised that the claim to being an African and standing for African ideas represented a notion/zone of non-being. Therefore, giving his concept of humanism a name and a race, Kaunda was consciously reclaiming an ontological breathing space for the African.

We also see this same ideologue role being performed by another decolonisation philosopher, Frantz Fanon whose work was aimed at understanding the psychological subjectivity of the colony and the colonised. In regarding the process of colonialism as a catalyst for African wretchedness, Fanon fought for the re-humanisation of our people of colour.

The fight against wretchedness underscored in Fanonian thought is no different from Kaunda’s dignification of African humanism. The antithesis to African wretchedness and the recovery of African humanism are never-ending process. This is mainly indicated in emerging African liberation philosophical concepts and ideas of around how African states should govern themselves.

Fanon’s work has been widely refenced in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. Fanon’s revolutionary philosophical mandate was predicated on the restitutive psyche of African humanity in as much as Dr Kaunda’s imagination of the African post-colonial governance was concerned. Like Fanon, Dr Kaunda was a decolonisation philosophical stalwart, shrewd Pan-Africanist, and African humanist.

Fanon and Dr Kaunda present a very pertinent mutual thesis on the psychopathology of imperialism. Having unpacked the psychological make-up of colonisation, these two leading African thinkers articulate so well the human, political and socio-economic urgency of decolonisation.

While the late Fanon supported Algeria’s War of independence from France as a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front, it will never be forgotten that Zambia was host to several African liberation movements in the fight against colonialism.

In fact, Zimbabwe owes its liberation freedom to the role played by Zambia. Dr Kaunda and many philosophically inclined heroes of decolonisation continue to be of great influence to the African liberation agenda. Yes, they may have physically departed the earth, but their ideas will continue to guide the most revolutionary resolutions of reclaiming Africa’s dignity. The immortal mark of decolonial champions like Dr Kaunda remain solidly effected throughout the pan-African, Afrocentric and post-colonial intellectual movements. Their physically mortality can never erase their philosophically immortality. Their founding role in the liberation of Africa planted a seed of the continuity of decolonisation. They represent the roots of a forever blossoming idea.

Evident to that, the recent call for the felling of statues of slave traders and the prominent demonstrations against the statue of Cecil John Rhodes in Oxford and Cape Town enunciate the continued fight against African wretchedness. When symbolically assessed the erection of the Nehanda statue in Harare, against the background of Western protests for the dismantling of slave traders’ statues, it’s clear that the whims of decolonisation are calling for the replacement of colonial memory with redemptive ideas.

This represents the very idea of Dr Kaunda’s African humanism — as the replacement the self-arrogated Anglo-American ancestries of power with decolonial dimensions and perspectives to understanding the ‘African condition’ and the quest to qualify it the dignity it deserves.

The sanguine foothold of Dr Kaunda’s African humanism is also evident in Zimbabwe’s land reform agenda. If the spirit of African freedom does not die — of which it will not, the indigenisation of the economy will remain a priority in the national questions of the day all over Africa.

The asymmetrical divide of power globally justifies the exigent need for Africans to fight for equality. As such it’s too early for us to argue that the passing on of the founding fathers presents the end of an era. As a matter of fact, the modern manifestations of imperialism and grotesque facets of neo-colonialism are producing a new wave of anti-colonial consciousness. This consciousness will forever draw its influences from Nkrumah, Nyerere, Mugabe, Biko, Sankara and many more founding fathers.

The relentless pursuit for African humanism home and abroad presents another opportunity for a fresh era. Thanks to Dr Kaunda and his counterparts of initiating the yesteryear liberation era.

Pan-Africanists are alive to the new fights of this era. There is no giving up because the elders are now rested but their teachings will superintend over our continental aspirations.

n Richard Runyararo Mahomva (BSc-MSU, MSc-AU, MSc-UZ) is a Political-Scientist with an avid interest in political theory, liberation memory and architecture of governance in Africa. He is also a creative literature aficionado. Feedback: Twitter: @VaMahomva & Email [email protected]