Narrative
Zambia Shall Be Free
Kenneth Kaunda · 1962
Synopsis
The political autobiography of the nationalist leader of Northern Rhodesia, published in the thick of the struggle for independence. In it the author puts colonial rule on trial and pleads for democracy, the only system able, in his view, to free the diverse peoples of the Zambia to come; he traces his own political path, up to the struggle for independence.
Context
The book appeared in London in 1962 from Heinemann, in the African Writers Series, and was reissued in 1981. J. G. Markham, in 1963, read it as a strong account of the author's political formation, while noting the tension between the violence in which his party was involved and the justification he later gave of it. Brutus Mulilo Simakole, in 2012, places it among the national autobiographies in which the author imagines the nation to come.
Who it is for
For reading the account of a father of Zambian independence, written at the very heart of the anticolonial struggle.
Prizes and reception
The review African Affairs, in 1963, judged the book disjointed, polemical and unreliable in its facts.