Thwarted expectations of independence and royal politics in the Luapula province of Zambia, 1964-1966 - ASC Research Seminar

Dr Giacomo Macola is the Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge. He has contributed to a number of learned journals and his PhD thesis (London, 2000) was published as The Kingdom of Kazembe: History and Politics in North-Eastern Zambia and Katanga to 1950 (Hamburg: LIT, 2002). He is currently working on a biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, the ‘father of Zambian nationalism’.

Based on a close reading of new archival material, this paper makes a case for the adoption of an empirical, ‘sub-systemic’ approach to the study of nationalist and post-colonial politics in Zambia. By exploring the notion of popular ‘expectations of independence’ to a much greater degree than did previous studies, the paper contends that the extent of UNIP’s political hegemony in the immediate post-independence era has been grossly overrated – even in a traditional rural stronghold of the party and during a favourable economic cycle. In the second part of the paper, the diplomatic and ethnic manoeuvres of the leaders of the eastern Lunda kingdom of Kazembe are set against a background of increasing popular disillusionment with the performance of the independent government. In keeping with the general thrust of the paper, the analysis underscores the importance of the local context and the limited value of neat generalizations concerning the relationships between ‘native authorities’ and the Zambian nationalist movement and government.