Here is why Kenneth Kaunda’s speech on this year’s Africa Freedom Day is the most important Zambia has heard since October 1964:
He is the only surviving founding head of state and government who has lived to see the Jubilee Year of his country;
He is the only person of his standing to have seen five successors take office in conditions of peace—and he is the only first president to have laid to rest three successors who have passed on;
He is the only surviving founding father of the current Africa Union which came into being as the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963;
He is the surviving first head of Zambia’s first Cabinet, honoured with three living inaugural ministers and 13 posthumously after 50 years; and He is the only founding father to return and at 91 seal a nation’s spiritual destiny with a declaration of epoch-making proportions.
His short speech, totally different from all the political pronouncements he has been known for, has set the nation’s spiritual tone for the next 50 years.
If the Christian Nation Declaration uttered by Frederick Chiluba on December 29, 1991 needed a seal, it was Kaunda’s speech which came in words as weighty as a father’s farewell to his children. For years to come, it shall surely read like the final chapter to his book Letter to My Children first published in 1973.
BLESSING
Who is better placed to bless a family than a parent? Nothing supersedes the last words of a father, and in this case, a founding father blessing his national family. Here is the unprecedented blessing, word for word:
“I Kenneth David Kaunda first President and founding father of the Republic of Zambia wish to express my hearty gratitude to God Almighty, the President and the people of Zambia for honouring me as the founding father of this Nation.
“I hereby pronounce today a blessing of peace, prosperity and stability upon our Nation of Zambia, the Presidency and the people of Zambia.
“I bless and therefore release the nation, its people and the Presidency from every negative forces made against this nation. I submit the souls now living and posterity and also its Presidency to the salvation and Lordship of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father.
“I further declare that Zambia shall forever enjoy tranquillity and shall remain a united and peaceful people under the motto; one Zambia one nation.
“The Lord bless Zambia, and keep Zambia.
“God bless you all. I thank you.”
MEANING
The keywords in this solid, undiluted blessing that men and women of God shall need to unpack and pray through are these: peace, prosperity, stability, tranquillity. They overflow with meaning.
Then there is the specific submitting of “the souls now living and posterity” and even “its Presidency” to the salvation and Lordship of Jesus Christ and God the Father. Notably, our founding father has blessed the Presidency (which he lost) three times!
Zambia is a land of the unexpected and the unforeseen—who saw the day when KK, and not a spiritual leader, would mark the Jubilee Year with this ‘release’?
Many are those who have believed that God has kept Kaunda this long for this specific purpose: to ‘release’ Zambia from any blood covenants he and his generation of leaders may have cut over this country, and to turn from any feelings of hurt towards Chiluba and citizens at large over his humiliating though peaceful eviction from power in 1991.
Chiluba’s Christian Nation Declaration certainly sparked never-ending controversy. In the face of all that, Mwanawasa declared Zambia would remain a Christian nation. So did Rupiah Banda. Michael Sata went as far as declaring that he would rule Zambia on the basis of the Ten Commandments. Edgar Lungu has already underscored the position of his predecessors.
Kaunda has not only cemented what his past rival Chiluba laid down; he has not only echoed what the last three constitutional review commissions have recommended (these were led by John Mwanakatwe, Wila Mun’gomba and Annel Silungwe); but prayerfully submitted “the souls now living and posterity” to salvation in Jesus Christ. That is so specific, so direct and so final that even if other religions devour more souls in Zambia, it seals the matter beyond dispute.
For our children’s generations, Edgar Lungu’s education ministry would be well advised to make the Christian Nation Declaration Speech of 1991 and Kaunda’s Jubilee Blessing of 2015, both highly unusual and abnormal in contemporary political history, items of study in schools. They have become landmark historical gems.
And instead of certain churches taking a distant, unconcerned cynical approach to matters as crucial as these, the shepherds and the sheep should continually evaluate the import and power of these spiritual decrees—especially because they have come not from the pulpit but from the highest office in the land… with 24 years of time in between!
If it is true that God is sovereign and rules in the affairs of men, let Christians accept His sovereign elevation of a nation that did not know its time had come.
FOUNDATION
Zambian governance will forever stand on the shoulders of the nation’s first three presidents. Their time in office laid a strong three-layered spiritual foundation.
David, our first president, played a role comparative to that played by David, the second king of Israel who subdued all hostile nations around the Promised Land. Through Kenneth David Kaunda, Zambia spearheaded the destruction of colonial powers to liberate the peoples of present day Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa under exceedingly difficult socio-economic conditions.
This is the man whom Nelson Mandela so esteemed that at his release from prison in 1994 his first foreign visit was to Kaunda’s Zambia. This is a man whose passion for the liberation of southern Africa saw his nationals pay severely to accommodate all the liberation movements, and at one time more than 500,000 refugees from surrounding nations.
This is the man who survived three coup attempts and forgave the plotters; who saw violent food riots of 1987 claim 15 lives, with more food riots in 1990; and the multiparty revolution which overrode him in 1991—all without the nation plunging into turmoil.
Jacob, our second president, played a role comparable to the works of the son of Isaac in the Old Testament. Jacob stole the birthright from his older twin brother Esau, and became the father of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
With the Christian Nation Declaration, Frederick Jacob Titus Chiluba wrested Zambia’s spiritual control from Eastern religions that were beginning to enthrone themselves in the seat of government at the height of UNIP rule before 1991.
As much as it can be argued that historically, presidents are ill-advised to do that, this is a different world. Today there is no such thing as a nation with a neutral soul totally unclaimed by either Christ or Lucifer.
In January last year, the Satanic Temple of New York applied to the Oklahoma state capitol authorities for space to install a seven-foot-tall statue of Lucifer in the open. Though city fathers and other leaders were horrified by that, they will fail to resist such currents for very long because the US has progressively uprooted every vestige of biblical Christianity from public institutions.
In the same place where the Satanic Temple applied to install the statue, there once stood a monument bearing the Ten Commandments, which the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued to remove.
The statue of Satan depicts him as Baphomet, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings and a long beard, often used as a symbol of the occult.
Satan is sitting in a pentagram-adorned throne with smiling children at his sides. We saw in our May 15 column that Satan’s agenda for children is to shoot them before they grow: not to cuddle and entertain them as the statue attempts to depict.
That, saints and pilgrims, is the exact alternative to the Christian Nation, and Jacob stole Lucifer’s right to rule this nation.
The Declaration is a Vision Statement and Values Statement all rolled into one. It espouses a national vision, a people’s mission and family values as relayed in the lyrics of the National Anthem. It is a statement of strategic intent. It is a rallying point giving credence to national development plans and bringing moral sensitivity into governance.
It is Zambia’s view of the future—not a naive declaration that all citizens are now born again. Even then, Nevers Mumba was dead right to announce that Zambia shall be saved.
While some still prefer to curse the night Jacob stood up in the person of Israel and declared Zambia a servant of the Most High, many are rising up to pray into reality the Kingdom of God in Zambia. They are not arguing about the Declaration anymore, but expecting the spiritual to manifest as in The Lord’s Prayer: Thy Kingdom come.
While that is so, there is one nation Jesus warned the Israelites about (Matthew 21:43). “I tell you, for this reason the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the fruits of it.”
One school of thought says the people whom Jesus spoke about are Zambia.
Levi in the Old Testament ensured the rule of God’s law in the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon in generations to come. Levy Patrick Mwanawasa steered Zambia back to the rule of law in his seven-year odyssey.
It was that mentality, with credit to the churches of Zambia and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) led by Cardinal Medardo Mazombwe, that saw the national debt of about US$ 7 billion written off by the G22 nations to less than one billion dollars in 2006.
IDENTITY
The composition of the Zambian National Anthem emerged from the nationwide consciousness of God and a desire to identify with Him. This was the case with the national anthems of nations like The Netherlands, Greece, England and Kenya which prayed to or acknowledged God.
In truth, it is the national anthem that declared Zambia a Christian nation long before Chiluba did. Lest we forget, the national flag was laid at the altar of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in 1964 and prayers raised to the Most High.
What was the meaning of all that if the Declaration is meaningless?
The name Zambia was derived from Zambezi, the name of the fourth largest river on the continent of Africa. The name Zambezi is based on three ethnical expressions originating among the peoples of North-Western Province. ‘Yambeji’ means ‘the best of everything’. ‘Mwambeji’ means ‘river of God’. ‘Nzambe Nzi’ means ‘God come’. And this is a river that practically embraces the country on its way to the Indian Ocean.
By interpretation, “Zambia” would mean: ‘God come and bring to us the best of everything through the river of God.’
Scottish explorer David Livingstone, after whom the tourist capital of Zambia was named, described the Zambezi River as a ‘Gospel Highway’ when he first saw it.
It also is no small matter that the First Cabinet in Zambia has been so honoured in such a manner by the sixth head of State and Government in the fiftieth year of our statehood. Whichever side of the Investiture Ceremony you stand, historical tectonics have shifted and now the future, suddenly and abruptly, looks different.
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