Zambia’s founding President, Kenneth Kaunda has passed on.
According to SABC, Kaunda, 97, died in Zambia’s capital Lusaka on Thursday after being hospitalized for a few days.
He was being treated for pneumonia in a hospital in the capital, Lusaka,
Kaunda led Zambia into independence from Britain and went on to rule the country from 1964 to 1991.
He joined the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress in 1951 as one of the people fighting for independence from the British.
Eight years later, he broke away and founded the Zambian African National Congress, which was banned and resurfaced as the United National Independence Party, which he was the leader.
In 1991, Kaunda called for multiparty elections in Zambia after he changed the rules that kept him in power and lost to Frederick Chiluba of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy.
He attempted a political comeback in 1996, but was barred by the constitution.