Epilogue

?he UNIP one-party state lasted for almost twenty years. Zambia’s eventual return to multipartyism in 1990–1991, one of sub-Saharan Africa’s first democratic transitions, attracted worldwide attention and has spawned a considerable literature. While primarily devoted to examining Nkumbula’s last years, this epilogue also wants to argue that to view the triumph of the Zambian Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) solely as the product of the 1980s economic crisis and ensuing contraction of state patronage is to ignore the long history of opposition politics that had predated and, indeed, outlived the inception of the one-party state. 1 Similarly, to stress the hijacking of the original MMD project by a reactionary coalition of businessmen, right-wing trade unionists and recycled UNIP politicians who had recently been excluded, or were facing the prospect of exclusion, from dominant patronage networks, 2 or the similarities that quickly came to the fore between Kaunda’s and his successor Frederick Chiluba’s leadership styles, 3 should not lead one to lose sight of the MMD’s distant, historica ? origins. This epilogue, then, focuses on the activities of Nkumbula and his core constituents during the Second Republic with a view to presenting a less cynical appraisal of Zambian democratization than is currently the case in the specialist literature. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Democracy · Democratization · Development economics · Economics · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Sociology · State (computer science) · Successor cardinal · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Law