Wednesday, October 14 2009

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Rupiah Bwezani Banda, President of Zambia....

The Commonwealth

Heads of Government meeting begins in

Port-of-Spain on November 27 and continues for three days.

Fifty-one heads or their representatives will assemble at The Hyatt for the talks.

Two countries have been

suspended — the Fiji Islands which was

suspended from membership on September 21, 2009 and Nauru, which is in arrears.

We continue today a daily feature on the Commonwealth and will feature the

Heads of these States who are expected

in Port-of-Spain in November.



Rupiah Bwezani Banda, 72, is the President of Zambia. During the presidency of Kenneth Kaunda, Banda held important diplomatic posts and was active in politics as a member of the United National Independence Party (UNIP).

Years later, he was appointed as Vice-President by President Levy Mwanawasa in October 2006, following the latter’s re-election. He took over Mwanawasa’s presidential responsibilities after Mwanawasa suffered a stroke in June 2008, and following Mwanawasa’s death in August 2008, he became acting President. As the candidate of the governing Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), he narrowly won the controversial October 2008 presidential election despite arguments after the elections that he won fraudulently.

Banda married his wife, Hope Mwansa Makulu, in 1966 and the couple has three sons together. Banda also has two sons from previous relationships and a set of fraternal twins from his current marriage.

He was the UNIP’s representative in Northern Europe in the early 1960s, and in 1965 he was appointed as Zambia’s Ambassador to Egypt (the United Arab Republic).

Banda became Ambassador to the United States on April 7, 1967. He served as Ambassador to the US for about two years, then returned to Zambia to serve as Chief Executive of the Rural Development Corporation for about two years and subsequently as General Manager of the National Agriculture Marketing Board for a similar length of time. He was then appointed as Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and while in this position he also headed the UN Council for Namibia. After about a year at the UN, he was appointed to the Zambian Cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs. During his brief stint as Foreign Minister (1975-1976, Banda was occupied by the task of attempting to broker a cease-fire in Angola.

A monkey urinated on Banda during a press conference earlier this year. Banda responded “You (monkey) have urinated on my jacket.”

Zambia, a landlocked country in south-central Africa, is about one-tenth larger than Texas. It is surrounded by Angola, Zaire, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia. The country is mostly a plateau that rises to 8,000 ft (2,434 m) in the east.

Early humans inhabited present-day Zambia between one and two million years ago. Today the country is made up almost entirely of Bantu-speaking peoples. Empire builder Cecil Rhodes obtained mining concessions in 1889 from King Lewanika of the Barotse and sent settlers to the area soon thereafter. The region was ruled by the British South Africa Company, which Rhodes established, until 1924, when the British government took over the administration.

From 1953 to 1964, Northern Rhodesia was federated with Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. On October 24, 1964, Northern Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zambia.

Kenneth Kaunda, the first president, kept Zambia within the Commonwealth of Nations. The country’s economy, dependent on copper exports, was threatened when Rhodesia declared its independence from British rule in 1965 and defied UN sanctions, which Zambia supported, an action that deprived Zambia of its trade route through Rhodesia. The US, Britain, and Canada organised an airlift in 1966 to ship gasoline into Zambia.

In 1972, Kaunda outlawed all opposition political parties. The world copper market collapsed in 1975. The Zambian economy was devastated—it had been the third-largest miner of copper in the world after the United States and Soviet Union. With a soaring debt and inflation rate in 1991, riots took place in Lusaka, resulting in a number of killings. Mounting domestic pressure forced Kaunda to move Zambia toward multiparty democracy. National elections on October 31, 1991, brought a stunning defeat to Kaunda. The new president, Frederick Chiluba, called for sweeping economic reforms, including privatisation and the establishment of a stock market. He was reelected in November 1996. Chiluba declared martial law in 1997 and arrested Kaunda following a failed coup attempt. The 1999 slump in world copper prices again depressed the economy because copper provides 80% of Zambia’s export earnings.

In 2001, Chiluba contemplated changing the constitution to allow him to run for another presidential term. After protests he relented and selected Levy Mwanawasa, a former vice president with whom he had fallen out, as his successor. Mwanawasa became president in January 2002; opposition parties protested over alleged fraud. In June 2002, Mwanawasa, once seen as a pawn of Chiluba, accused the former president of stealing millions from the government while in office. Chiluba was arrested and charged in Feb. 2003.

Although the country faced the threat of famine in 2002, the president refused to accept any international donations of food that had been genetically modified, which Mwanawasa considered “poison.” In August 2003, impeachment proceedings against the president for corruption were rejected by parliament. In April 2005, the World Bank approved a $3.8 billion debt relief package for the country.

In September 2006 presidential elections were held and incumbent Levy Mwanawasa was reelected. President Mwanawasa suffered a stroke in June 2008 and died in Paris in September. Vice President Rupiah Banda took over as acting president and was elected president in October, defeating Michael Sata, 40.6% to 38.6%. Sata said the vote was rigged.