Fare thee well Mama Betty Kaunda – OBITUARY
September 24, 2012
By TENTANI MWANZAH
THE name Kenneth Kaunda readily comes to mind in relation to African liberation struggles and efforts aimed at resolving Africa’s woes and other ills in the world. He is an icon voted by the BBC in 2010 as one of the foremost 50 African icons of the previous 50 years, the only Zambian in that bracket. Call of duty in fulfilment of obligations to realise these goals has made it impossible for him to be a man who stays long in one place. He has been kept busy with public life since joining active politics more than six decades ago. A normal family life has eluded him ever since.
Typically, he was away from home on an international mission in South Africa on Wednesday September 19, 2012 when devastating news reached him that his dear wife of 66 years, Mama Betty Mutinke Kaunda nee Banda, went to join her ancestors in the early hours of that day. She was 83. She died of causes related to her diabetic condition in Zimbabwe while on a visit to her daughter Musata who lives there with her husband, James. Kaunda wept. Who wouldn’t?
The previous day, September 18, 2012, in Durban, South Africa, Kaunda was a recipient of yet another award in recognition of his monumental work in bringing about peace and understanding among peoples of the world, the Mahatma Gandhi award. Mama Betty Kaunda has been the pillar of strength behind her husband, enabling him to score the many successes of great magnitude for all the six and half decades they have been together. She was invaluable to him.
He apparently recognised this fact and in the last years, he resorted to publicly sing in her honour as if to make up for his indebtedness to her. An accomplished guitarist, he would pick up his guitar, amidst cheers and ululations, during public functions and take his audience down memory lane to the days of his courtship with her. His favourite ballad, Pagan Moon, originally taken from the 1931 film Safe in Hell, had catchy words:
“I remember that night in your arms/Underneath the Pagan moon /Beneath the light on a pillow of palms/ underneath the pagan moon/…Maybe this was a sweet maiden’s prayer/ To your eyes and your lips and your hair/ Only the dark came too soon/ As we watched our pagan moon ,” Apt.
It would indeed have been untold ingratitude on the part of her acclaimed husband to ignore the pivotal role the great woman of substance played in his life. Incidentally, it was his mother Helen Tengwera Kaunda, who identified and recommended her for a wife to him. Let Kenneth Kaunda speak for himself: “With unerring judgement, my mother selected her from amongst all the other girls in the area as my future wife and marriage arrangements were concluded between the parents.”
It was only in June 1946, the very year marriage ceremonies took place, that he first set his eyes on the love of his life. He was on his way to Mufulira for a scout training camp. Passing through Mpika, his cousin arranged for him to meet her. “I had no doubt when I first saw her that my mother had made a wise choice and I have never had reason since,” he fondly recalls. Kaweche Banda, for that was the name of her father, was a prominent businessman with a shop near the Mpika Boma and it was here that she was born on November 17, 1928. Banda with his wife Milika Sakala Banda, had been close friends of the Kaunda family for many years.
The immortal Kwame Nkrumah, that miracle of a man, noting that human memory is short time without number reminded us that “independence does not come on a silver platter”. His Chinese counterpart the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Ze dong, had a couple of years earlier made his oft-quoted statement “A revolution is not a dinner party or doing embroidery or writing an essay … it cannot be so refined…” For Kenneth Kaunda, his contribution to the liberation fight entailed periods of long absence from home; more so the time he was organising secretary for the Northern Province, covering a wide area. Today one would be talking of most of Muchinga, Northern and Luapula provinces. It was a herculean task.
The responsibility of raising up the children squarely rested on the shoulders of Mama Betty Kaunda, who ably took up the challenge and lived beyond expectations. Kaunda never forgets that there was a time as organising secretary, having been away from home for quite some time, organising, mobilising and educating the people, he grew a beard.
Upon reaching home his first-born son, Panji, failed to recognise him; afraid, he ran away to his mother only to tell her “Mayo, kwaisa icimuntu.” She must have laughed uncontrollably when she discovered that ‘icimintu’ in question was after all her one and only husband, also known as bashi Panji -father of Panji. When in the company of my friend Bina Moyo, MP, I went to commiserate with him in 1998 after his release from the unjust detention, which started on Christmas Day of 1997, he suffered at the hands of the Chiluba regime, he narrated this story if only to show what he had gone through in life and what Mama Betty Kaunda meant to him. In giving him encouragement, I reminded him of the words he had told me earlier uttered by a Katete freedom fighter each time they were faced with many a difficult situation. “Ndiye umuna uyu, mwamuna afunika kuti nthawi zina (in this particular case) mwana wobala yeka azimuyiwala” (Thats what being a man entails. It is important for a man that there should be times when his own biological child should fail to recognise him).”
Police raids at their residence were not infrequent. In 1955, after one such raid at home extended to his office as secretary-general of the African National Congress, he, together with ANC president Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, were sentenced to two months imprisonment with hard labour for being in possession of a copy of a London-produced magazine-Africa and the Colonial World – considered as a prohibited publication in the territory by the authorities. Every person in Britain was free to read the magazine but not so for Africans in the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia! This was Kaunda’s first taste of prison.
Mama Betty Kaunda was the first to recognise the coming of the unwelcome white visitors, who happened to be policemen and she alerted her husband who was resting in bed at the time. He psychologically prepared himself for any eventuality.
The March 1959 police raid following the banning of the militant Kaunda-led Zambia African National Congress (ZANC), a breakaway group of the ANC, was more serious. It saw him rusticated to Kabompo, incarcerated in Lusaka Central Prison, the notorious Chimbokaila, before being transferred to Salisbury (Harare) prison. He was only released in January 1960.
These uncertainties in politics and the attendant hardship of the times led Mama Betty to sometimes resort to unorthodox survival strategies for the sake of the family. There was a time she went into such mundane chores as charcoal burning to raise income for food and children’s education. What a great woman! There was no subsistence allowance for active politicians.
Materially and financially, life became better after 1962, when United National Independence Party (UNIP) won seats in the Legislative Council, as Parliament was called then. Kaunda steadily rose to become Minister of Local Government, Prime Minister and first President of the Republic of Zambia on October 24, 1964.
They moved to Government House, renamed State House after Independence.
Mama Betty Kaunda became Zambia’s first First Lady on Independence Day in 1964. She was a trail blazer in that role and had to be careful how she treaded on the new ground. Being conscientious, the path she took and followed was that of being in the background most of the time. It was rare to see her addressing gatherings of any significance, least of all those which could have political connotations of any sort. Contrary to what many detractors may assert, Mama Betty Kaunda, growing up under a climate not too favourable to the education of women, attained the highest levels of education available to a woman. Unlike most Northern Rhodesia women of her age, it is noteworthy that she had remained in school up to Standard IV. Through her notable hard work, she earned a little pocket money when she was identified to work during hours when she was not in school as a ‘nurse girl’ for the District Commissioner’s wife. It is on record that she was one of only two females in the top class of her school and held her own with the boys. In 1944, she secured a coveted place at the famous boarding school at Mbereshi to do her two years’ training as a teacher. There she received her training in cookery, dressmaking and other domestic science subjects.
Mama Betty Kaunda’s style in approaching the role of First Lady was not out of place. It was in line with a good number of First Ladies on the continent, mostly those whose husbands were titans of freedom. The style of the African First Lady of that time was different from that of the American First Lady. There was a silent golden rule making it almost taboo for the African First Lady of the post-independence period to be given to standing on the Hustings making speeches advancing political causes. It is inconceivable to imagine Fathia Rizk, Kwame Nkrumah’s Egyptian-born wife, on the podium championing agendas to increase the approval rating of the husband notwithstanding the fact that she was at a top Egyptian University when Kwame Nkrumah married her in December 1957.
Tanzania’s Maria Nyerere and Uganda’s Miria Obote were no exception. Publicly, they kept to themselves and left politics and delivery of speeches to their eminent husbands, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Apollo Milton Obote, respectively.
Not even Mama Ngina, the wife of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, could afford to break rank and to behave differently. That was the style of the African First Lady. The dress code was also predictable as there was an attempt to give it as African outlook.
In Zambia, the change came in 1991 with the change in government when UNIP, the country’s ruling party for 27 years, from the inception of independence, was swept out of power by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). There was a feeling that there had to be a complete break with the past. So it was that the new First Lady starting with Vera Chiluba has been for all intents and purposes an American-style First Lady.
Solid a woman as she was, barely three years into independence, she was faced with a serious no mean challenge of her life in 1967. Age 39, doctors diagnosed her with diabetes. Health experts say diabetes is a condition, NOT a disease. It is instructive to note that, not one prone to desperation with adverse news, she was able to manage diabetes for the latter 45 years of her life. Prominent Lusaka lawyer Sibanze Simuchoba was impressed with her “unparalleled stoicism” in the manner she handled her diabetic state. Kaunda has often revealed and expressed admiration that she was “a strong-willed and courageous woman,” who used to inject herself to receive her regular dosage of insulin. Jocularly, he would add that “she could not rely on me to do it. Me I am a coward”.
Rodgers Mapenzi Simuchoba and Chileshe Mwashinka, both members of the Pan Africanist Committee (PAC), remember her for her dignity and graceful nature but especially her unwavering support for freedom fighters. They echoed South Africa’s Jacob Zuma who has stated unequivocally that “she was our mother who looked after so many South Africans in exile”. The Head of the Commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth II, sent a message of condolences to the Kaunda family acknowledging Mama Betty Kaunda’s commitment in serving the country.
THE Freedom Fighters.
After UNIP’s hold on power ended in 1991, with her husband, she left State House gracefully. In 1992, Kaunda relinquished his position of president of UNIP, a position he had held since January 1960 and went on his first retirement from active politics.
In March 1993, something terrible happened. UNIP, now in opposition with only 25 parliamentary seats in a 158 seat parliament, surprised even itself by remaining a vibrant political party with deep-rooted grass root support. This was not in line with the desires of the Chiluba regime which aimed at seeing UNIP to its grave sooner rather than later. People woke up one morning to information that a sizeable number of prominent UNIP leaders and some sympathisers were rounded up after a declaration of a State of Emergency in what came to be known as the Zero Option saga. It was alleged that the Zero Option was a UNIP plot to render Zambia ungovernable. Among those detained were Rupiah Bwezani Banda, Rabbison Chongo, Bonnie Tembo, William ‘Tekere’ Banda, Ackim Zimba(who died in detention), Muyoka Lemmy Sulwisha, Muwanei, Peter Lishika, Cuthbert Nguni, Stephen Moyo, Patrick Goma, Stanley Muntanga, Ilukena and Mama Betty Kaunda’s son, Ngwawezi Kaunda, commonly known as Wezi.
Over the years, because of what she had gone through she had developed a thick skin and could withstand all kinds of pressures. Somehow, she could not stand the sad experience of seeing her son, Wezi, widely considered heir-apparent, behind bars on flimsy grounds. In the very early days, the Zero Option saga took its toll on her. She suffered a stroke, massive to subsequently confine her to the wheelchair till her final days. That notwithstanding she lived for another close to 20 years. She possessed rare resilience.
Prison Graduate (PG), a term introduced by Kwame Nkrumah, was a lofty title of honour among freedom fighters symbolising a new birth and baptism, having been to prison fighting for the liberation of the continent, was considered a mark of distinction and people were not filled with terror at the sight of prison walls. Former Nigerian military ruler General Olusegun Obasanjo coined his own Post-Prison Graduate (PPG). Explaining those eligible for PPG status, he said it applies, mostly, to those heads of State, who, having retired gracefully from office, find themselves in prison for political reasons. To surmise what he said, “I have been saying that people like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela and others are Prison Graduates (PG). But for Kaunda and myself, we are Post-Prison Graduates (PPG) because we found ourselves in prison on trumped-up charges after leaving the presidency.” Kaunda spent most of his 1997/98 prison spell under house arrest at his Kalundu residence with Mama Betty. Virtually, Mama Betty was also a prisoner at Kalundu Prison. Arguably, she too was entitled to the distinction of PPG as described by Obasanjo.
The title Mama (Mother of the nation) was hard-earned in struggle and to all it comes naturally because she deserves it.
Eternal glory to the memory of Mama Betty Kaunda-Mother of the nation!
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