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Reactions have trailed commemoration of this year’s Kenneth Kaunda Day.
Among others, the Non-governmental Gender Organisations’ Coordinating Council (NGOCC) has called on Zambians to embrace and practice values of unity, love and patriotism as espoused by the founding President.
NGOCC Board Chairperson, Grace Sinkamba, urged the country to introspect and recommit to the values espoused by the freedom fighters who fought for the political independence of the country.
Sinkamba said Dr. Kaunda will forever be remembered for championing the motto of “One Zambia, One nation” as a symbol of unity.
She said as a people and indeed as a country, there is need to therefore reject any maneuvers and attempts by politicians to try and divide the country on the basis of tribe and region.
“It remains a fact that Dr. Kaunda’s leadership was anchored on a message of love. On many occasions, the founding President encouraged citizens to love each other,” Sinkamba said.
She said the many vices the country is seeing today such as the increased cases of violence against women or indeed corruption, are partly because citizens have lost this very important value towards each other as well as the spirit of patriotism.
“It is important therefore that on the occasion to remember Dr. Kaunda, the country should recommit towards the love for one another, the love for humanity,” Sinkamba said.
Augustine
This year’s Kenneth Kaunda Day which was held on Friday was commemorated under the theme, “KK The Unifier”
Meanwhile, New Heritage Party (NHP) president, Chishala Kateka, said KK was the embodiment of the Zambian ideal, of its essence; love for God and fellow man, integrity, courage in the face of great adversity, independence of mind and action.
Kateka said Love for God and fellow man, KK founded Zambia as its President after leading the territory to Independence from the British colonisers, and developed the Philosophy of Humanism as the guiding Ideology of the nation.
She said the philosophy of humanism was based on KK’s African heritage of communal living and where wealth of the country-land belonged to all the people and everyone was their brother’s keeper and therefore meant that private Capitalist, individualist wealth at the expense of everyone else, was frowned upon, in preference for common state ownership of the means of wealth creation.
“Hence his effecting the 1968 Matero Declaration in which the Zambian people through their government took majority shareholding in previously privately owned businesses in all the sectors of the economy,” Kateka said.
She said this was a philosophy also based on KK’s Christian beliefs in the supremacy of God as the creator of all human beings and that these human beings were created equal in the image of God.
“This was a philosophy that entailed that Zambia was in international relations, a friend to all other nations and people’s, adopting even the founding date of the United Nations Organisation as its own independence day, to emphasise KK’s deep belief in the concept of the whole world with it’s peoples as one large family of nations, all equal regardless of size , military and economic strength,” Kateka said.
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