Zambia

• 1. Introduction

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  Zambia entered the 1964 Summer Olympics as a British-ruled territory and left them as an independent republic. Independence arrived on the 24th of October 1964, the very day of the closing ceremony. No country had ever before gone into an Olympic Games as one nation and come out as another. Zambia is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, with its capital at Lusaka and eight neighbours on its borders.

  That single day raises questions that the rest of this documentary takes up. Who lived on this high plateau before any flag flew over it? What lies beneath its soil that drew so many outsiders across the centuries? And how did a nation born amid other people's wars come to pass power from one leader to the next peacefully?

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• 2. Rivers and Plateaus

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  Zambia covers 752,614 square kilometres, which makes it the 39th-largest country in the world. Most of it is high plateau cut by river valleys, lying mostly between latitudes 8 and 18 degrees south. Two great drainage systems share the land. The Zambezi and Kafue basin covers about three-quarters of the country across the centre, west and south. The Congo basin drains about one-quarter in the north. A patch of the northeast belongs instead to the internal basin of Lake Rukwa in Tanzania.

  The name Zambia comes from the Zambezi, a word that may mean the grand river. The Zambezi rises inside the country, flows through the west, and then marks the southern border with Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Two of its largest tributaries, the Kafue and the Luangwa, flow mainly through Zambia. They join the Zambezi on the Zimbabwe border, at Chirundu and Luangwa town respectively. From Luangwa town the Zambezi leaves for Mozambique and eventually reaches the Mozambique Channel.

  In the east, the plateau between the Zambezi and Lake Tanganyika valleys climbs from about 900 metres in the south. It reaches 1200 metres in the centre and 1800 metres in the north near Mbala. The Luangwa Valley cuts a curve through this highland, and the Nyika Plateau, at 2200 metres, rises beside it on the Malawi border. Its extension into Zambia, the Mafinga Hills, holds the national high point, Mafinga Central, at 2339 metres.

  The Central African plateau here sits between 1000 and 1600 metres above sea level, and that height tempers a tropical climate. The rainy season runs from November to April and matches the summer. The dry season follows from May or June until October or November. During the cool months of May to August, the altitude makes the weather subtropical rather than tropical. Stretches of semi-arid steppe appear in the southwest and along the Zambezi valley.

  A 2015 report counted about 12,505 identified species in Zambia. Of these, 63% were animals, 33% were plants and 4% were bacteria and other microorganisms. The country has an estimated 3,543 species of wild flowering plants, and the Northern and North-Western provinces are the most diverse. Some 242 mammal species live there, most in woodland and grassland. The Rhodesian giraffe and the Kafue lechwe are subspecies found only in Zambia. Of roughly 490 fish species in 24 families, Lake Tanganyika is home to the highest number of endemic ones.

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• 3. First Peoples and Iron

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  The fossil skull of Broken Hill Man, also called Kabwe Man, was found in Kabwe District and dated to between 300,000 and 125,000 years BC. It shows that early humans lived in the area.

  Until around AD 300, the land was home to the Khoisan and Batwa peoples. The Twa were split into two groups, the Kafwe Twa around the Kafue Flats and the Lukanga Twa around the Lukanga Swamp. Rock art at the Mwela Rock Paintings, Mumbwa Caves and Nachikufu Cave is attributed to these early hunter-gatherers.

  About 5000 years ago, Bantu people from the region of present-day Cameroon and Nigeria began a migration that lasted for millennia. Called the Bantu expansion, it ranks among the largest human migrations in history. The Bantu are believed to have carried ironworking into large parts of Africa. They travelled by two main routes, a western one through the Congo Basin and an eastern one through the African Great Lakes.

  The first Bantu settlers in Zambia lived in villages with no chief or headman. Neighbours helped one another prepare fields, and villages moved on when slash-and-burn farming exhausted the soil. They also kept herds of cattle. These communities were so self-sufficient that early European missionaries in the south remarked on it. One missionary described the Tonga blacksmith, who dug his own ore and smelted it, and who, in his words, "makes axes, hoes, and other useful implements." The missionary added that the bellows were made from animal skins, and the anvil and hammers from iron the smith had produced himself.

  Ingombe Ilede, at the meeting point of the Zambezi and Lusitu rivers, became a major trading hub. Its markets handled fabrics, beads, gold and bangles. Goods came from what is now southern Democratic Republic of Congo and from Kilwa Kisiwani. Others travelled from as far away as India, China and the Arab world. The Portuguese joined these African traders in the 16th century.

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• 4. Kingdoms of the Interior

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  By the 14th century, farmers and iron workers in the Upemba region of today's Democratic Republic of Congo had built the Luba Kingdom. Their communities learned to use nets and harpoons, build dugout canoes, clear canals through swamps and raise dams as high as 2.5 metres. They traded fish, copper, iron goods and salt with the Swahili coast and, later, the Portuguese. The Bemba, Lamba, Bisa, Senga, Kaonde, Swaka, Nkoya and Soli all formed parts of this kingdom. It combined a centralised government with smaller independent chiefdoms, and its trade networks stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean coast. Artisans held high standing, and literature flourished.

  Nkongolo Mwamba, the red king, is the villain of a famous Luba genesis story. He is a cruel and drunken despot who eats in public and cannot control himself. His rival Ilunga Mbidi Kiluwe is a prince who is refined, gentle and careful about his manners. The tale draws a line between two kinds of ruler, with tyranny on one side and compassion on the other.

  According to Lunda genesis myths, a Luba hunter named Chibinda Ilunga arrived around 1600. He was a son of Ilunga Mbidi Kiluwe. He married a local princess named Lueji and received control of her kingdom. He is credited with bringing the Luba model of statecraft to the Lunda. Most rulers who claimed Luba ancestry were folded into the Luba empire, but the Lunda kings stayed separate and expanded their power. Under the ruler Mwaant Yaav Naweej, the Lunda opened trade routes to the Atlantic coast. He made direct contact with European traders who wanted slaves and forest products, and he controlled the regional copper trade. Settlements around Lake Mweru handled commerce with the East African coast.

  The Luba and Lunda states eventually declined. The Atlantic slave trade in the west and the Indian Ocean slave trade in the east weakened them, and breakaway factions fought them. The Chokwe, a Lunda satellite state closely related to the Luvale, first suffered from the European demand for slaves. After breaking away, they became notorious slave traders themselves, exporting captives to both coasts. Other ethnic groups and the Portuguese eventually defeated the Chokwe. The instability scattered people from the Democratic Republic of Congo into various parts of Zambia. Most Zambians trace their ancestry to the Luba-Lunda and nearby Central African states.

  A kalonga from the Phiri clan founded the Maravi Empire in 1480. The title means paramount chief of the Maravi. Its people were Bantu migrants who left the Congo Basin in the 1200s, passed Lake Mweru and settled around Lake Malawi. The empire stretched from the Indian Ocean through Mozambique to Zambia and central Malawi. Ivory was its main export, carried to Swahili brokers, and iron was also made and sold. In the 1590s the Portuguese tried to take over the export trade. The Maravi of Lundu answered by unleashing their WaZimba armed force, which sacked the Portuguese trade towns of Tete and Sena. The Maravi also brought the traditions of the Nyau secret society from Upemba, with its ritual dances and masks. Succession disputes and slave raids by the Yao brought the confederacy into decline.

  When Great Zimbabwe was fading, its prince Nyatsimba Mutota broke away and founded the Mutapa Empire. He and his successors took the title Mwene Mutapa, meaning "Ravager of the Lands." From the 14th to the 17th century the empire ruled between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, across parts of today's Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It sold gold and ivory through the Swahili in return for Asian silk and ceramics. The Portuguese tried to set up markets and convert the people to Christianity. Muslim Swahili in the capital were outraged, and the unrest gave the Portuguese an excuse to attack the gold mines and ivory routes. Disease along the Zambezi defeated that attack. Civil war in the 1600s began the decline of Mutapa, and the Portuguese later conquered it before rival Shona states took over. The Portuguese presence also led to the breakaway Rozvi Empire. Its ruler, Changamire Dombo, defeated the Portuguese and expelled them from their trading posts along the Zambezi.

  Under Shaka, the Zulu grew more militarised, and pressure from English colonists in the Cape added to the turmoil called the Mfecane, meaning the crushing. The Zulu absorbed the women and children of defeated peoples. Nguni men who escaped used Zulu tactics against others. Zwagendaba led a Nguni group across the Zambezi northward, and these Ngoni delivered the final blow to the weakened Maravi Empire. Many settled in what is now Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, merging into neighbouring peoples.

  In the west, the Kololo, a group of Sotho-Tswana heritage, conquered the Luyana. The Luyana had arrived from Katanga and founded the Barotse Kingdom on the Zambezi floodplains. Under the Kololo, the Kololo language was imposed on them. By the time the Luyana revolted and overthrew their rulers, their own tongue had been largely forgotten. A hybrid language, SiLozi, emerged, and the Luyana began calling themselves Lozi.

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• 5. Explorers and Company Rule

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  In 1798, the Portuguese explorer Francisco de Lacerda died on an expedition from Mozambique to the Kazembe region. He had hoped to cross Southern Africa from coast to coast for the first time. His friend Francisco Pinto took over the leadership of the expedition. Portugal claimed and explored the territory between Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Angola at that time.

  In 1855, David Livingstone became the first European to see the waterfalls on the Zambezi River, and he named them Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. He wrote that "Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight." Locally the falls are called Mosi-o-Tunya, meaning thundering smoke in the Lozi or Kololo dialect. Livingstone hoped to end the slave trade through what he called the 3 Cs: Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation. The nearby town of Livingstone carries his name. After his death in 1873, highly publicised accounts of his journeys drew missionaries, traders and other visitors.

  The 1885 Pink Map showed Portuguese claims to the area between Angola and Mozambique. In 1888, the British South Africa Company, led by Cecil Rhodes, obtained mineral rights from the Litunga, the Paramount Chief of the Lozi. That land later became Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia. Britain's 1890 Ultimatum against the Portuguese then began its consolidation of control.

  In 1895, Rhodes asked his American scout Frederick Russell Burnham to look for minerals and ways to improve river navigation. On that trek, Burnham found major copper deposits along the Kafue River. In December 1897, a group of Ngoni from Zululand rebelled under Tsinco, son of King Mpezeni. The rebellion was put down, Mpezeni accepted the Pax Britannica, and that region became North-Eastern Rhodesia.

  The two protectorates merged in 1911 to form Northern Rhodesia. For most of the colonial period, an administration appointed from London governed the territory with advice from the British South Africa Company. In 1953, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland grouped Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now Malawi, into one semi-autonomous region. A sizeable minority opposed this and demonstrated against it in 1960-61. The federation was dissolved on the 31st of December 1963, leaving Northern Rhodesia to chart its own course.

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• 6. Presidents and Handovers

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  In January 1964, Kenneth Kaunda won the only election for Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia. The Colonial Governor, Sir Evelyn Hone, was close to him and urged him to stand. Soon after, the Lumpa Uprising broke out in the north under Alice Lenshina, Kaunda's first internal conflict as leader. Kaunda then became the first president. The new state faced steep challenges, with few trained and educated Zambians able to run the government. The economy leaned on foreign expertise, partly supplied by the British diplomat John Willson. More than 70,000 Europeans lived in the country in 1964.

  Kaunda's socialist United National Independence Party held power from 1964 until 1991. Kaunda played a role in regional diplomacy, working with the United States on conflicts in Southern Rhodesia, Angola and Namibia. From 1972 to 1991, Zambia was a one-party state under the motto "One Zambia, One Nation," a phrase Kaunda coined. The Choma Commission of 1972 laid the groundwork for that arrangement.

  Southern Rhodesia's white-led government issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. Kaunda endorsed Patriotic Front guerrillas who raided Southern Rhodesia from Zambia, which militarised the border until it closed in 1973. On the 3rd of September 1978, guerrillas of the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 825 near Kariba. Eighteen people survived the crash, including children, but most were then shot by militants. Rhodesia answered with Operation Gatling, striking guerrilla bases in Zambia. The main target, Joshua Nkomo's military headquarters outside Lusaka, gave the raid its name, the Green Leader Raid. Two more bases were hit the same day by air power, paratroops and helicopter-borne troops.

  The Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 ended white minority rule next door. By then Angola and Mozambique had won independence from Portugal, but civil strife in both, and the Namibian War of Independence, sent refugees into Zambia. The Benguela railway through Angola was essentially closed to Zambian traffic by the late 1970s. Zambia's support for anti-apartheid movements such as the African National Congress also invited raids by the South African Defence Force.

  In June 1990, riots against Kaunda intensified, and many protesters were killed by the regime. Kaunda survived an attempted coup that same year. In 1991 he agreed to restore multiparty democracy and lost the election to Frederick Chiluba. Zambia has since continued to experience peaceful transitions of power.

  Freedom has stayed uneven. The government has prosecuted critics on the legal pretext of inciting public disorder, and libel laws have been used to suppress speech and the press. State outlets such as the Zambia Daily Mail and the Times of Zambia have generally reported along pro-government lines. Many journalists reportedly censor themselves, since most government newspapers carry prepublication review.

  Michael Sata was president from 2011 until he died on the 28th of October 2014. Vice President Guy Scott, a Zambian of Scottish descent, became acting president. An election on the 22nd of January 2015 drew 11 candidates. On the 24th of January, Edgar Chagwa Lungu was announced the winner with 48.33% of the vote, a lead of 1.66% over Hakainde Hichilema at 46.67%. Nine other candidates each took less than 1%. In August 2016, Lungu won re-election in the first round, and the opposition alleged fraud, which the governing Patriotic Front rejected.

  In the 2021 elections, voter turnout was 70%, and Hichilema won 59% of the vote to Lungu's 39%. On the 16th of August, Lungu conceded in a televised statement and sent a congratulatory letter. Hichilema was sworn in on the 24th of August 2021, eight days later.

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• 7. Copper and the Economy

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  Industrial copper mining began on the Copperbelt in the late 1920s, and mining townships soon dwarfed the older population centres. Growth continued after independence, then the economic decline of the 1970s to the 1990s reshaped where cities grew. Today the population clusters along the railway and roads running south from the Copperbelt through Kapiri Mposhi, Lusaka, Choma and Livingstone.

  Copper made up about 69% of the value of Zambia's goods exports in 2019. In 2023 the country produced 698,000 metric tons. That made it the second-largest producer in Africa and the seventh-largest in the world, with 4% of global production. The Copperbelt Province alone accounts for almost one-quarter of GDP and one-third of copper production. The national exchange rate rises and falls with the copper price. Zambia also mines gold at Kansanshi, manganese at Serenje, nickel at Munali, and gemstones including amethyst, beryl, emerald and tourmaline.

  The government nationalised the mining industry in 1973, and production declined substantially under state control. After privatisation between 1996 and 2000, investment, production and jobs in copper grew. Today the state-owned ZCCM Investments Holdings holds 49% of Mopani Copper Mines, and the United Arab Emirates holds the other 51% through the International Holding Company. China has invested heavily in Zambian copper through state-owned firms, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. The Chinese firm JCHX Mining owns 80% of Lubambe Copper Mines, with ZCCM holding the other 20%. Hazardous conditions, low wages and labour abuses at the Chinese-operated Collum Coal Mine have caused political controversy.

  In the mid-1970s, the world price of copper, Zambia's principal export, fell sharply. Hauling the metal long distances to market added to the strain. Lenders offered relief, but with prices still low the growing debt became hard to service. By the mid-1990s, Zambia's foreign debt per person remained among the highest in the world. Its total foreign debt exceeded $6 billion in 2000, when it qualified for relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative. In February 2004, a nationwide strike followed an austerity budget that froze civil service salaries and raised taxes. Even so, 2007 marked a ninth consecutive year of economic growth, with inflation at 8.9%, down from 30% in 2000. Life expectancy at birth, about 40.9 years in 2007, had risen to around 62 by 2023.

  Farming provides many more jobs than mining does. In 2004, Zambia exported more corn than it imported for the first time in 26 years. Roughly 150 to 300 white Zimbabwean farmers, expelled by Robert Mugabe, were welcomed into Zambia, and they now work an estimated 150 farms growing tobacco, wheat and chili peppers. Their skills, together with liberalisation under president Levy Mwanawasa, are credited with stimulating an agricultural boom.

  Tourism reached a record 9.8% of GDP in 2019, before falling to 5.8% in 2021. Visitors focus on 20 national parks and 34 game management areas. Victoria Falls, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the biggest draw, and the Zambian side lies within Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park.

  In 2009, Zambia generated 10.3 TWh of electricity, with strong use of hydroelectricity and solar power. Poor rains in the 2014/2015 season lowered the water at Kariba dam and other major dams, and a serious energy shortage followed. In September 2019, African Green Resources announced a $150 million investment in a 50 megawatt solar farm, alongside an irrigation dam and 80,000 more tonnes of grain silo capacity.

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• 8. Faith, Rhythm and Football

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  The 2022 census counted 19,610,769 people in Zambia. About 44% of them live along the major transport corridors, which makes the country one of the most urbanised in sub-Saharan Africa. Zambia nominally counts 73 ethnic groups, though in practice there are fewer distinct ones. The Bemba, Nyanja and Tonga are the three largest, and the Bemba alone number about 3.3 million.

  The figure of 73 languages is probably inflated, because it fails to separate language from dialect. The real number is likely only 20 or 30. English is the official language, used in law, education and official business. Nyanja is the main local language in Lusaka, while Bemba leads on the Copperbelt. Portuguese has entered the school curriculum as a second language because of a large Angolan community.

  The 1996 constitution declared Zambia a Christian nation while protecting freedom of religion, and no other African country makes Christianity a state religion. A 2022 estimate puts 98.0% of Zambians as Christian, with 74.5% Protestant, 17.9% Catholic and 5.6% Jehovah's Witnesses. Many blend indigenous traditions with Christianity. Seventh-day Adventists account for about 1 in 18 Zambians, one of the largest per-capita communities in the world. About 12 per cent belong to the New Apostolic Church, which has more than 1.2 million believers in the country. Pentecostal congregations expanded considerably after Frederick Chiluba, a Pentecostal, became president in 1991. A Jewish community that numbered about 1,000 in the 1960s, mostly with roots in Lithuania, Latvia and Germany, had dwindled to fewer than 50 by 2012.

  As of December 2016, the government recognised 77 seasonal traditional ceremonies. Among the best known are Kuomboka in Western Province, Mutomboko in Luapula Province and Ncwala in Eastern Province. A Kamangu drum announces the start of the Malaila ceremony. Other rites stay secret, such as those of the Nyau and Nakisha dancers.

  The Lechwe Trust, founded in 1986, supports the visual arts through grants, scholarships, exhibitions and collecting. In 2019 it held Art Lives On - ii, a retrospective of the sculptor Flinto Chandia and the printmaker and painter Lutanda Mwamba. In the 1970s, Zamrock blended traditional Zambian music with heavy repetitive riffs, and it has since won a cult following in the West. Its bands include WITCH, Paul Ngozi and his Ngozi Family, and Rikki Ililonga with his band Musi-O-Tunya.

  At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, the national football team beat Italy 4-0, and Kalusha Bwalya, the country's most celebrated player, scored a hat trick. Many pundits still say the greatest team Zambia ever assembled was the one that died in a plane crash at Libreville, Gabon, on the 28th of April 1993. Even so, Zambia reached 15th in the FIFA rankings in 1996, the highest of any southern African team. In 2012, after losing two earlier finals, Zambia won the African Cup of Nations by beating Côte d'Ivoire 8-7 on penalties in Libreville, a few kilometres from the crash, 19 years on.

  Beyond football, Zambia has won two Olympic medals, a bronze for Keith Mwila in boxing in 1984 and a silver for Samuel Matete in the 400-metre hurdles in 1996. In the early 2000s, the Australian and South African rugby teams were captained by George Gregan and Corné Krige, who were born in the same Lusaka hospital. In 2023, Zambia's women made their World Cup debut and won their first game. Lushomo Mweemba scored the fastest goal of the tournament, and Barbara Banda added the 1,000th goal in Women's World Cup history.

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