Zambia was originally inhabited by the Bushmen.
Although the Portuguese knew of the area in the 16th century
they largely ignored it, concentrating their colonisation
in the sea-board countries of Angola and Mozambique.
Perhaps as a response to foreign intrusions
in southern Africa, Shaka of the Zulu, and Nguni clan, set
about creating a centralised militaristic state in the early
19th century. Surrounding peoples who did not voluntarily
agree to absorbtions in the growing Zulu empire had no option
but to flee for survival. Two of these groups were to make
a forceful impact on Zambia. One of the fleeing tribes was
led by Zongendaba. He led his followers out of Shaka’s
domains in the 1820’s.
These Ngoni (as they are known today) crossed
the Zambezi in 1835 and went northwards as far as Lake Tanganyika
where they settled for a while among the Bemba. In 1865,
under Zongendaba’s successor Mpenzeni I, they established
themselves permanently in what is now Zambia’s Eastern
Province. Sebitwane, another chief of the Ngoni, crossed
the Zambezi a few years previously taking over the territory
just north of the Victoria Falls.
In 1840, David Livingstone, the missionary
and explorer, was to open central Africa to the gaze of
British interests. He started his activities at the London
Missionary Society’s station at Kuruman but soon moved
north to found his own mission at Kolobeng, near Gaberone,
Botswana, where he stayed for a decade. Livingstone started
going on longer and longer journeys of exploration, receiving
help from a wealthy Englishman named William Cotton Oswell:
the two of them were the first Europeans to visit Lake Ngami
in the middle of the Kalahari. In 1851 Livingstone and Oswell
crossed the Kalahari to visit Sebitwane, whom he had already
met, on the Upper Zambezi. At Sebetwane’s Livingstone
had his first sight of the slave trade - the Kololo nobles
were wearing Manchester cloth obtained from the Portuguese
in Angola in return for ivory and slaves.
Livingstone and Oswell, who was also a
staunch abolitionist, concluded that the only way to stop
the trade would be through a new type of mission where a
combination of Christianity and Commerce would lead to Civilisation:
in fact a sort of Christian development programme under
which slaving would be replaced by legitimate trade in cotton,
which grew in the area and for which there was a large market
in Britain. The scheme was to be managed by Scottish settlers.
Sebitwane, agreed that Livingstone could
establish a mission in his country, if only because it might
afford him protection against his enemy Mzilikazi of the
Ndebele, whose warrior kingdom bordered his own.
Although Sebitwane died shortly after coming
to this agreement, his successor, Sekeletu undertook to
honour it, and Livingstone promised to establish the mission
himself. All that remained was to find a suitable outlet
to the sea. The most economical passage for anticipated
cotton (and ivory) exports might be through the Portuguese
port of Luanda on the Atlantic and Livingstone decided to
see if there was a feasible route from Barotseland (as the
Kololo Kingdom is called) to there. The journey was financed
by Oswell and Sekeletu. Livingstone set off from the Upper
Zambezi in 1853. The return journey of over a year was a
nightmare, the route totally unsuitable for the export trade.
Livingstone then convinced himself that
the Zambezi could be ‘God’s Highway’ to
the Indian Ocean. Again with the support from Sekeletu,
Livingstone marched off eastwards down the river. He ‘discovered,
and named after Queen Victoria, the great Waterfall, which
the Kololo had already called Mosi oa Tunya (The Smoke that
Thunders). To the Leya, who lived right beside it and held
it sacred, it was called Shongwe (Rainbow). The whole grand
scheme collapsed in ruin and recrimination when it was found
that the Cabora Basa gorge in Mozambique made God’s
Highway totally un-navigable.
Cecil John Rhodes’ British South
African Company (BSAC) had been able to take over the whole
of Zambia by the end of the 19th century. In 1911 the territory
was named Northern Rhodesia, its capital the Town of Livingstone,
overlooking the Victoria Falls. (In 1935 the seat of government
was moved to Lusaka).
By 1923, BSAC’s rule had become an
objectionable anachronism for the British government, and
in that year, the Colonial Office took over the territory,
proclaiming it a Protectorate where African interests would
be paramount.
The discovery and opening up during the
late 1920’s and 1930’s of the rich underground
ore-bodies along the Zambian Copperbelt were soon to make
that small region - 120 km long by 40 km wide - one of the
worlds’ most concentrated and renowned mining areas.
In the early 1950’s the Colonial
Office agreed to have Northern Rhodesia joined in a federation
with Nyasaland (Malawi), and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
By 1960 the British Government, under the premiership of
Harold Macmillan acknowledged that the days of colonial
rule on the continent were coming to an end.
The Federation was dissolved in 1963. In
January the following year Zambia’s first universal
adult suffrage elections were held, Kenneth Kaunda becoming
Prime Minister. In October 1964, Zambia became an independent
republic with him as president. Kaunda remained in office
for 27 years. The one-party state was abolished and free
elections were held in October, 1991. The MMD’s Frederick
Chiluba became Zambia’s second president. Upon assuming
the presidency, Chiluba made Christianity the official state
religion. After a very controversial election in Dec 2001
MMD won again and Levy Mwanawasa was sworn in as President.
|
