Zambia’s First Republican President, Kenneth Kaunda, has received a memento from Gandhi Smriti, a museum where India’s icon Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.
The memento was presented to Dr. Kaunda in Lusaka by Zambia’s High Commissioner to India, Judith Kapijimpanga, according to local media reports on Friday.
The memento was first presented in New Delhi, India, when the Zambian High Commissioner held a day’s exhibition in honour of Dr. Kaunda’s contributions to Africa and global peace efforts, at a function that attracted diplomats from Malawi, Tanzania and the academia.
Kapijimpanga said the younger generation should know that Dr. Kaunda also immensely contributed to the release of South Africa’s former and late President, Nelson Mandela, from Robbin Island prison.
“It is high time that the world remembered the sacrifice that Dr. Kaunda made in liberating Zambia and the Southern African region,” Kapijimpanga said.
She added that in 1990, Dr. Kaunda declared a five-day holiday after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, where he visited regional Presidents that convened in Lusaka ahead of his ascension to the Presidency in South Africa.
The High Commissioner praised India’s Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti Museum for taking time to celebrate the ideology and humanism of Zambia’s first president, where he believed that he was not free if his neighbours were not free.
“The event coincides with the 150th birthday anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi who largely inspired Dr. Kaunda’s non-violent movement against colonial masters,” Kapijimpanga added.
She explained that the memento is a gift from the Indian people to Dr. Kaunda with love.
