Ivor Powell
Advance warning that two professional South African hitmen were inside Zambia and plotting with elements in President Frederick Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) government to eliminate opposition leader Kenneth Kaunda may have been the factor that saved the former president’s life.
According to Kaunda’s son, Major Wezi Kaunda, it was because he had been tipped off that Kaunda Snr was not in the passenger seat of his Land Cruiser when it was raked with AK-47 fire at the gates of his home in Lusaka’s Kabulonga suburb at around 8pm last Thursday. Wezi Kaunda said the intelligence – of a four man hit squad being assembled with two professionals from South Africa – had been passed on to the Zambian authorities but they failed to provide any protection.
It is not clear whether the alleged South African hitmen were actually involved in the attack last Thursday.
Wezi Kaunda has accused Chiluba’s MMD government of being behind the attempted hit – the third against his father in as many years.
It came the day after the Zambian Citizenship Board – in a bizarre culmination to a drawn-out citizenship battle between Kenneth Kaunda and Chiluba – declared the former president a stateless person on the grounds of his Malawian descent.
The decision by Judge Sakala for the Citizenship Board contradicts an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court to the effect that any person inside Zambia at the time of independence could claim citizenship. That ruling was recorded in a case brought by Kaunda’s United National Independence Party against Chiluba – in the light of evidence that Chiluba was born across the border in the former Zaire to non-Zambian parents.
The Citizenship Board ruling has been appealed in the light of the Supreme Court precedent. Observers say it is almost certain that the Supreme Court ruling will win the day – allowing Kaunda to stand as a candidate for the presidency.
Chiluba himself, however, will need to change the Constitution in order to contest the presidency for a third term – which currently allows only two terms.
Despite public avowals that he intends to stand down, current indications are that Chiluba does indeed intend to stand for a third term – and that constitutional changes are in the pipeline. In the early part of 1998, a team of Namibian constitutional lawyers – fresh from introducing changes to the Namibian Constitution to allow President Sam Nujoma to stay in power for a third term – were brought into Zambia by Chiluba. They stayed there for around three months, apparently drafting similar amendments to the Zambian Constitution.
These amendments were discussed at a series of meetings of senior MMD personnel during the parliamentary recess at the end of March this year. They could be implemented around the middle of 1999.
Sources close to the MMD said that Chiluba has banned his party colleagues from putting themselves forward to campaign to take over the presidency on his departure.
Though elections are scheduled only for the year 2001, Chiluba is expected to call snap elections which could take place as early as October or November this year.