In the years before Zambia achieved statehood in 1964, one of the few white men to stand up against the culture of white supremacy was a Jew — Simon Zukas.
Mr Zukas and his family came from pre-war Lithuania to what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia because it did not employ quotas limiting Jewish settlers — unlike South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe.
Zukas was born in Lithuania in 1925. His father emigrated from Lithuania to southern Africa in 1936 in search of work, as the shadow of Nazism was descending on Europe. He settled in Northern Rhodesia, opening a shop in the town of Ndola, and his family joined him in 1938.
Zukas arrived as a 13 year old who spoke only a little English, struggling to adapt to a country where black people were treated as second-class citizens under British colonial rule.
By the early 1960s, around 1,000 Jews lived in Northern Rhodesia. But after Zambia's independence in 1964, numbers began to dwindle, part of a larger exodus of whites from the country.
Mr Zukas’s schooling took him to the University of Cape Town, where he studied civil engineering. His time there coincided with the inauguration of apartheid, which thrust him into radical student politics and inspired him to join the main nationalist movement, the ANC.
An active participant in the country’s struggle for independence, he was eventually deported to Britain but, following statehood, was invited in 1965 to return by the new country’s president, Kenneth Kaunda.
As a soldier in East Africa during World War II, he had acquired a profound distance for racism and the assumptions of white superiority that seemed to him part and parcel of the colonial enterprise.
Overcoming African suspicions, he helped organise opposition to Federation, one of the few whites to work with African groups. It cost him most of his white friends at the time when it was difficult to be accepted on familiar terms by Africans
Zukas played a key role in Zambia's struggle for independence from Britain in the 1950s, and went on to be a government minister after independence
He gradually became disillusioned with the UNIP and President Kaunda’s one-party state and became one founders of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD). 
After the party’s triumph in the 1991 elections, he served as MPt and a member of the government in several positions, finally resigning after the government tried to prevent KK from contesting the presidency in 1996 on the grounds that he was not a Zambian citizen.
In 2001, he was chairman of opposition Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) party.
While Zukas may be the highest profile of Zambia's Jews, collectively the small Jewish community helped shape the country.
While Zukas may be the highest profile of Zambia's Jews, collectively the small Jewish community helped shape the country.
Mr Zukas was most recently leader of the Forum for Democracy and Development, an opposition political party. He retired from politics in 2005.
Simon Zukas was married to Cynthia Zukas, a Zambian painter up until his death on 27 September 2021. He was 96
Source - thejc, lusakatimes & chalochatu,
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