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History in Brief
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Rupiah Bwezani Banda more popularly known as “RB” was the overwhelming choice for Presidential candidate of the ruling party, the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) in the 2008 presidential by-election in Zambia.
The incumbent President of Zambia Dr.Levy Mwanawasa died in a Paris hospital on August 19, 2008 from the effects of a stroke that he suffered at Sharm-El –Sheikh, Egypt while attending the annual summit meeting of the African Union (AU). In elections held on September 5, 2008 to replace him by the party’s 60-member National Executive Committee (NEC), Banda polled 43 votes. His nearest rival had 11. Seven party provincial committees and unanimously endorsed Banda’s candidature even before that election.
Adult life and Public Service
It was a landslide victory that brought to the fore a man with a lifelong history of service to the people of Zambia.
“RB” has spent virtually all his adult life in the public service. The breadth of his experience and his coolness under fire has marked him out as the safest pair of hands at this trying moment in the history of Zambia. As it is, Zambia has no reason to doubt “RB.” He is a smooth operator very attuned to the exercise of power having been near the top since independence. He has been Vice-President of Zambia since 2006 and became the acting President upon the death of President Mwanawasa – a trying moment which thanks to his diplomatic skills and resilience passed off well for the country.
Participation in Zambia’s anti-colonial struggle
This is just the tail-end of his long career in the public service. He was one of a generation of young men who participated in Zambia’s anti-colonial struggle and went on to be trail-blazers after independence in October 1964.
He served as Foreign Minister of Zambia from 1975 – a critical period in the history of Southern Africa. At that time, Zambian diplomacy centred on efforts to liberate Southern Africa and Zambia’s role was pivotal in the events and initiatives leading up to resolution.
Foreign Minister and Regional Liberation Struggle
At the time, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa were still under minority rule. The military coup that overthrew the Portuguese government of Prime-Minister Marcelo Caetano and paved the way for the independence of Angola and Mozambique had occurred only the previous year and the two countries won their independence only later that year.
Zambia’s abiding interest in the liberation of the region meant that its Foreign Minister was among the key figures in the diplomacy and events that eventually led to the emancipation of the region. RB has therefore a regional profile. For, arising from that background he is known and has interacted extensively with many of the leaders of the region today. He for instance was foreign minister at the same time as Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was Foreign Minister of his country. He came to the foreign ministry after several years of service as ambassador of Zambia in some of the world’s most critical capitals. By that time he had already served as the Permanent Representative of Zambia to the United Nations where again he was right in thick of southern African diplomacy as Zambia sought international support and involvement in the liberation of countries south of the Zambezi. He had a critical input and left an imprint on the events that shaped the destiny of these countries.
President of the UN Council on Namibia
He for instance served as President of the UN Council on Namibia which was effectively the government of Namibia while the matter of South Africa’s disputed mandate over the territory that was at the time known as South-West Africa was resolved. The Council was also the focal point for the “Contact Group” on Namibia that was put together by the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Dr Chester Crocker. It was largely through this contact group that the breakthrough that led to the independence of Namibia was achieved. Later as Senior District Governor for Lusaka, he was the political and administrative head of the Zambian capital, the country’s nerve centre, which gave him an invaluable insight into civic affairs as well as politics at the local level. He had been for many years, Member of Parliament for the Lusaka seat of Munali, at the time one of the largest as it incorporated what is now Lusaka Central constituency.
RB was among a group of young leaders of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), the party that won Zambia’s independence in October 1964. All were to undergo a kind of “baptism by fire” as progressively more responsible and challenging jobs were thrust on their shoulders. Exposed at an early age, they were to have some of the most illustrious careers to date in the service of their country. Among RB’s contemporaries, were Vernon Mwaanga who was to be Zambia’s Foreign Minister and subsequently Vice-Chairman of the Rural Development Sub-Committee of the UNIP Central Committee, Alexander Chikwanda, who served as Finance, Local Government, and Agriculture Minister, the late Ali Simbule who famously riled the British Government for likening it to a “toothless bulldog” wagging its tail before rebel Rhodesian leader Ian Smith and Moto Nkama who served at the UN and was for many years ambassador of Zambia to what was then West German.
Zambia’s first ambassador to Egypt
At age 27, he was Zambia’s first ambassador to Egypt or the United Arab Republic as it was known then. It was a critical posting. Cairo is an important African capital but it was doubly so for Zambia at that time because Egypt under its charismatic revolutionary leader Gamal Abdel Nasser was one of the major supporters of the liberation struggle in Zambia. UNIP had maintained an office there even before independence. In fact Zambia’s fist Vice-President Reuben Kamanga had been the UNIP representative in Egypt. In that role RB gained detailed first hand insight into what is still perhaps the world’s most intractable conflict- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has kept the whole Middle East in ferment since 1948.
In that role RB gained detailed first hand insight into what is still perhaps the world’s most intractable conflict- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has kept the whole Middle East in ferment since 1948. At the time Egypt was the principal Arab protagonist. He left that posting the year of the second Egypt-Israeli war more popularly known simply as the “six-day war” of 1967. He was named Zambia’s ambassador to the United States and moved to Washington DC. He was 30 and among the youngest ambassadors in the American capital.
His experience transcends diplomacy.
General Manager of NAMBOARD
For, in 1970, he was appointed General Manager of the National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBOARD), the state crop marketing company. It was one of the largest and pivotal parastatals of its time. The story of Zambia since independence has been one of attempting to diversify away from mining into agriculture and NAMBOARD was at the core of that effort. The nature of its business meant that it had a presence in every district of the country. It was structurally unwieldy in some respects and the inexperience of staff meant that it did not always perform to expectations. It had several problems some of which led to its demise eventually but under RB, NAMBOARD paid the farmers for every bag. Farmers were sure of that and it stimulated production. RB left it intact and still in business. He was subsequently head of the Rural Development Corporation (RDC), the state agricultural holding company-one the largest state conglomerates of its time.
Born in 1937 at Gwanda, Zimbabwe
He was born at Gwanda in Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe on February 19, 1937. He spent his formative years in that country but was educated in Zambia. His parents were Zambians who like most enterprising Zambians of that time had migrated to neighhbouring Zimbabwe in search of employment, a trend that accelerated with the coming of the Federation Rhodesia and Nyasaland. He did primary school at Madzimoyo and Katete in the Eastern Province.Education
He gained admission to the elite Munali School in Lusaka for his secondary school education. It was the most prestigious and the leading secondary school of its time. It is the alma mater of some of the best and brightest that Zambia produced in those early days and admission was highly competitive as it took in students from all over Zambia. Only the brightest gained admission as Africans were not expected to reach that level!
President Banda with his wife and children But for RB, that was not to be all. Upon completion of Form Six (A-Levels), he won a scholarship to study at the University of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia. He was anxious however to enter a European university to read for his bachelor’s degree. In time, he secured a scholarship to study at the prestigious Lund University in Sweden. He graduated from there with BA in Economic History in 1964.
Among the 100 or so Zambian university graduates at the time of independence
He was thus among the 100 or so Zambian university graduates at the time of independence. In Sweden he had combined study with advocacy for Zambia’s independence and was effectively the UNIP representative in northern Europe.
Sports enthusiast
A sports enthusiast, he was the leader and inspiration of the first group of traveling Zambian soccer fans-the Bola-Bola group. With him at the fore and core, the Bola-Bola group traveled around much of Africa to cheer the Zambia National Soccer team which was on the ascendancy.
Vice-President of the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ)
He has served as Vice-President of the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) and is life member of the association. He was instrumental in securing professional contracts in Europe for the early Zambian footballers who played professional soccer overseas. He succeeded the German businessman Wilfred Sauerland as manager of the African and Commonwealth Lightweight boxing champion, the late Lottie Mwale whose affairs he oversaw through his company International Sports Promotions (ISP). Outside of politics, he has keen insight into business having run his own companies Chipoza Holdings initially, then Robert Hudson Ltd, an engineering services firm supplying the mines and Allenwest Zambia Ltd, an electrical engineering services firm.
Munali Member of Parliament and Business
But he retained an abiding interest in public affairs even as he ran his businesses. In 1988, for instance, he regained the Munali parliamentary seat which he had lost in the 1983 elections and remained an MP until 1991 when he lost the seat again to the MMD in the first multi-party elections after 17 years of one party rule. He was one of the UNIP luminaries who worked to re-organize the party after its massive electoral defeat in the 1991 multi-party elections. But the given the increasingly fissiparous tendencies in that party, it was difficult to pull it together once more and in 2002, with his wife of many years Hope Makulu Banda mortally ill with cancer and UNIP showing few signs of rejuvenating, RB quietly left the party. It was a difficult personal moment as his wife subsequently died of the cancer that afflicted her.
2006 General Election and Vice-President
With his spouse of many years no more, RB returned to his farm in Chipata and subsequently re-married. His nature, credentials and background meant that he remained extremely influential in the province as a whole. After the 2006 General Election in which the Eastern Province for the first time voted mostly for the MMD and its Presidential candidate Levy Mwanawasa, he was tapped for the post of Vice-President. There are many who believe that this was one of the late president’s best appointments because it brought in a man with extensive experience and political maturity and a clear profile. It certainly served Zambia well in the uncertain days following the hospitalization and subsequent death of the late President Mwanawasa. RB was calm and steady throughout the ordeal.
Rupiah Bwezani Banda may be 70-something years old. But if the truth be told, most of those years have been spent in the service of Zambia. He is a safe pair of hands, tried and tested. He is the most eminently qualified to give Zambia the “continuity, stability and progress” that she sorely requires to stay the course.One of us-an avowed soccer fan
One of us-an avowed soccer fan
Though he has been close to the top for most of his life, Rupiah Banda (RB) has also managed to remain a very ordinary man with the sort of passions that have kept him firmly in the Zambian milieu. Throughout, he has possessed an uncanny ability to accurately read the nation’s pulse and articulate it in a way that has created momentum. There is a sense in which he has always been simply “one of us.” There is perhaps no better demonstration of that than the excitement among Zambians that he triggered with his “Bola-Bola,” association, the first organized group of Zambian soccer fans. The Bola-Bola craze caught on fast and rapidly became an integral aspect of the Zambian game. It set the trend and struck the right chord among Zambians. At soccer matches, members dressed up in Zambian colours with caps and all. They were noisy, enlivening the atmosphere at soccer matches and those who belonged to the movement or thought they did, pooled resources together to travel when Zambia played away and that was a new development which came with Bola-Bola.” The “Bola-Bola” group quite rapidly became a sort of broad grassroots movement in support of the Zambia National soccer team and soccer in Zambia generally. .People easily identified with it and there was a great deal of public interest and participation especially the more Zambia won and in those days Zambia would win many games in a row. The Independence Stadium became one of the most hazardous destinations for any team drawn against Zambia. For a long stretch, Zambia simply never lost at that venue.
It was more or less out of the question. Zambia steadily climbed to the top of the African soccer rankings. Match results were rarely in doubt. Home or away, Zambia tended to prevail. Those Zambians who wanted to be associated with this run of success and they were many, found a ready home in the Bola-Bola group. It was clearly an idea whose time had come and nobody seemed to understand that better than RB. He was at the forefront and in full Bola-Bola livery, for that matter. He was clearly in his element and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. He is the ultimate soccer fan. As a result of his abiding interest in the game, he came to be instrumental in securing professional contracts overseas for the early Zambian players who went to play professional football in Europe. Many of the contemporaries of the current FAZ President Kalusha Bwalya had contacts with RB in that role.
He assisted to find clubs for talented Zambian soccer players who wanted a professional career overseas. Again, this was a new trend in the Zambian game. There had earlier of course been Zambian professionals abroad like Fred Mwila, Howard Mwikuta and Emment Kapengwe who played for the Atlanta Chiefs in the US. But had been break in the trend and it had been many years since a Zambia played abroad. It had now resumed in earnest and RB was once more at the centre of it. Many players secured professional contracts and left to play overseas. In time, RB was to take on another sports role, one that again “threw him back” close to the centre of Zambian society.
His company took over management of the trail-blazing Zambian boxer Lottie Mwale. He had talent and had won convincingly in cases, the Commonwealth and later the African light heavy weight boxing championships- becoming the first Zambian boxer to hold such titles. In his own way, he demonstrated what was possible and inspired many Zambians. He was a sort of national icon and in a sense he carried the hopes of the people. RB had him in his stables and managed what was in effect, in the public eye at least, a national asset. Again, he took that responsibility very seriously and kept the boxer afloat and therefore the hopes of many Zambians alive.
Sport is clearly one of his passions and he has time for it. Both by record and temperament, he has to rank among Zambia’s leading soccer fans. But even that is an under-statement. He has served as Vice-President of the Football Association of Zambia(FAZ) and is a life member of the association. He is also chairman of the Chiparamba Soccer Academy which helps young Zambian players to develop their talent. Among the notable players to come through the academy are Clifford Mulenga, Yoram and Boyd Mwila. He follows soccer closely and is known to be a fan of the English premiership side, Arsenal which has quite a following in Zambia. He returns his interest in the Zambia national soccer team and follows the mainly up and down trend of its fortunes nowadays. Were he to become head of state, he would definitely be a top-level force for the improvement of sport in general and the restoration of the national soccer team to its winning ways. These are matters close to his heart and they pertain to something that he feels in himself and knows in great detail, just like all other soccer fans.