These are dark days for southern Africa. The last month has seen xenophobic riots and killings in Zambia, once an almost immaculately peaceful country, and the reinstatement of several hundred corruption charges which could be delivered against South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma.
Times have changed in Zambia since its first president, Kenneth Kaunda, galvanized the country’s 72 ethnic groups (not counting European and Indian populations) into a united nation. During his decades in power, he defied the white minority regimes to his south, Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa. He hosted the exile headquarters of the African National Congress (ANC) and sheltered the Namibian exile group SWAPO, whose country South Africa occupied in defiance of the U.N.
