27
Oct
Two weeks after his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela embarked on an 18-day foreign tour to thank the countries that had supported the ANC during the struggle against apartheid.
His first stop was Zambia.
It was only right and proper. After going into exile in 1961, ANC president Oliver Tambo established ANC missions across the continent, basing the movement in Tanzania. Northern Rhodesia was a critical transit point for South African refugees on their way to Tanzania to be trained as Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres on the “Freedom Ferry” from Botswana across the Zambezi.
Thomas Nkobi was the ANC’s chief representative in Zambia from independence until 1968, when he became deputy treasurer-general. Tambo moved the ANC headquarters to Lusaka the following year.
Radio Freedom, the ANC’s underground radio station, was broadcast into South Africa from Zambia, while MK’s high command (but not the training camps) was also based there.
Zambia became increasingly important for the ANC in the early 1980s, as apartheid South Africa systematically isolated it and other liberation movements from countries such as Swaziland and Mozambique.
In 1985, the ANC held its first national consultative conference in 16 years, protected by Zambian soldiers to deter South African attacks.
There was a real danger of attack; South Africa was training Zambian dissidents to destabilise the Zambian government and mounted a series of bomb attacks on ANC members in Lusaka. But President Kenneth Kaunda stood firm.
Finally, in February 1990, Mandela was released and the ANC was unbanned.
Two weeks later, he was in Zambia to meet the members of the ANC’s national executive committee for the first time.
It was the first time he and Kaunda had met.
“It’s a special moment for all of us,” Kaunda told Mandela. “We love you. We respect you. We consider you a leader of the ANC, a leader of the South African people (and also) our leader.”
The gratitude was mutual. Mandela thanked Kaunda for his role as peacemaker, for meeting with both FW de Klerk and his predecessor PW Botha to secure his release.
Three months later, the ANC Women’s League met in Lusaka to elect an interim leadership corps ahead of their return to South Africa.
As negotiations for democracy down south began in earnest, so the ANC finally closed its headquarters in Lusaka and relocated to Johannesburg – for the first time in almost 30 years.
Shortly after South Africa achieved its own liberation, Zambia established full diplomatic relations with the new administration. As Muyeba Chikonde, Zambia’s high commissioner notes, “the ties forged during the struggle continued to deepen and grow”.
In 2001, South African president Thabo Mbeki’s main project, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) was formally adopted in Lusaka at the OAU heads of state meeting.
The following year, Mbeki invested Kaunda with the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Gold in December 2002 in recognition of his role in the struggle against apartheid.
Last year, Kaunda was back in South Africa, this time to deliver an eulogy at Mandela’s funeral.
“South Africa has always recognised Zambia’s hospitality dating back several decades as was clear from President Jacob Zuma’s remarks when he visited Zambia in 2009: ‘We feel at home in this former headquarters of the ANC’,” remembers Chikonde.
The two countries have a number of bilateral agreements covering trade and industrial development, agriculture and animal husbandry, geology, mining and mineral beneficiation, energy, health and defence.
“The difficult years of fighting colonialism and apartheid together must translate into a successful joint quest for economic freedom and social development. Our shared history must encourage us to work together to fight poverty, disease, to ensure that our people have decent jobs and a better quality of life,” says Chikonde.
“Our two business sectors must enhance their co-operation even further to ensure that we increase economic co-operation and trade. Trade between our two countries has increased substantially since 1994.
Zambia is one of South Africa’s biggest trading partners in Africa, with a total trade volume of over $3.2 billion.”
This is expected to surge following the listing of the Zambian currency, the kwacha, on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/ties-that-bind-sa-zambia-1.1770669#.VE5J0oe9XbE