Thread by @Kauswe3

The Night Without a President - The night President Kaunda resigned. - 1968

A Thread

“Lock the door, do not let him out’, a voice shouted in the packed hall. “If he does, the country will turn into chaos”
They all looked at the man issuing these instructions. His slender bearded figure was trembling. So was the familiar walking stick.

Kenneth Kaunda had just announced that he was tendering his resignation as Republican President to Chief Justice James Skinner. The bearded man was his childhood friend Simon Kapwepwe then Vice President of the party and country.

The year was 1968 at Chilenje Hall at a UNIP National Council meeting.

But Kaunda would not be swayed . He ordered the doormen to open the door. This was a presidential directive and they obeyed. He got into his official limousine and as the sirens started blaring, he ordered that they be switched off.

“I am no longer President.” He declared to the driver. “Take off the flag from the car too.”

Arriving at State House he told his wife Betty to start packing. “Nafipwa”, (it is finished) he said to a startled wife.

So, continue reading for the events leading up to this............

In 1968 when the United National Independence Party (UNIP) held the National Council at Chilenje conference Hall in Lusaka, the meeting flopped because it was reduced to a regional and tribal battlefield that left Dr. Kaunda shocked to the bone marrow.

Two rival groups fashioned on tribal pacts emerged within UNIP: Easterners and Westerners on one side (led by Reuben Kamanga), and Northerners and Southerners (led by Simon Kapwepwe) on the other.

So toxic was the jostling for positions within UNIP that Kennth Kaunda resigned from the office of the president

He did not want to be part of a political organisation and government promoting regional and tribal divisions and stormed out of the meeting and went straight to his official car and was driven off to State House.

Upon arrival at State House, Dr. Kaunda told his staff and wife Betty to pack their belongings in readiness to vacate State House.

Vice-President Grey Zulu called Kapwepwe, and these two liberation heroes drove to State House to talk to Dr. Kaunda.

Zulu and Kapwepwe tried to reason with Dr. Kaunda indicating how the leadership vacuum had potential of triggering tribal bloodshed, but Kaunda refused to rescind his resignation.

For almost fourteen hours, the country had no president.

Some of the people in Kapwepwe’s faction were delighted with Dr. Kaunda’s resignation because they wanted Kapwepwe to vie for the presidency and replace Dr. Kaunda. However, Kapwepwe refused to be driven by his supporters’ political intimation.

Kaunda had for that night really resigned. Everybody concerned became so repentant, having been part and parcel of the catastrophic manoeuvre. And as Zambia’s unity hung precariously on a breaking shoe-string, delegates and those who were informed about the situation, panicked.

The only sensible thing that the delegates could do was to try to dissuade the president from effecting what they deemed as his catastrophic decision. They exactly did this.

To achieve their objective, they mobilized the religious leaders as well as the very close personal friends of the president to convince him back.

All the general commanders of the armed forces as well as others of exceptional brain-power were summoned to State House.

After all the efforts to see him back were exhausted, Kaunda finally gave in to the collective wisdom and rescinded his decision to quit. But before that, the delegation needed to promise him unbroken unity ‘One Zambia, One Nation’, as originally designed.

The resignation of Dr. Kaunda on the 5th of February, 1968 is captured in a book titled ‘The Night without a President’ by Sikota Wina .