Kenneth David Kaunda (born 1924), first president of Zambia, was a leading figure in his country's independence movement. Until he stepped down in 1991, he maintained his critical position as the leader of a buffer country between white-ruled states in southern Africa and hostile, independent black-ruled states to the north.

Kenneth David Kaunda was born on April 28, 1924, at Lubwa Mission near Chinsali in Northern Rhodesia. His father was a minister and teacher who had left Nyasaland (now Malawi) in 1904, and his mother was the first African woman to teach in colonial Zambia.

After completing his education in the early 1940s, Kaunda began teaching at Lubwa in 1943 and was headmaster there as well from 1944 to 1947. Then he moved to the copper mining area, where he founded a farmers' cooperative, was a mine welfare officer (1948), and became a boarding master at Mufulira Upper School from 1948 to 1949.

Political Career

The urbanized copper area...