Mainza Chona - Independence Struggle

Independence Struggle

Chona returned to Northern Rhodesia in December 1958. During his absence from Northern Rhodesia, politics had moved forward on several fronts. The White-dominated Central African Federation (CAF) had been established on 1 August 1953, in spite of feeble opposition from the Black population through the African National Congress (ANC), led by Nkumbula and Kaunda. The two leaders drifted apart as Nkumbula became increasingly influenced by White liberals and was seen as being willing to compromise on the issue of Black majority rule. Eventually Kaunda broke from the ANC in October 1958 and formed the Zambia African National Congress (ZANC), with Nkumbula remaining as leader of the ANC. Chona had been a member of ANC while in London and he had not made a choice between the two factions. Due to ZANC's militancy and its unwillingness to compromise on the issue of "independence now", Kaunda and other leaders of the new party were detained by the CAF authorities, and ZANC was banned in March 1959. Chona decided to take active part in the operations of the still-legal ANC, but his challenge to Nkumbula's cautious leadership of the party resulted in a further split.

Chona and other nationalists broke away from the ANC and, in October 1959, Chona became the first president of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), the successor to ZANC. However, he did not see himself as the party's main founder and he stepped down when Kaunda was released from prison in January 1960. As Kaunda's loyal lieutenant, Chona was elected deputy president of UNIP, but he had to leave Northern Rhodesia to avoid a charge of sedition brought by the increasingly rattled CAF authorities. He remained in London as UNIP's overseas representative for more than a year. He also served as a UNIP delegate to the Federal Review Conference in London in December 1960 and returned home in February 1961.

In June 1961, Chona was elected National Secretary of UNIP and he remained in that post for eight years. He was instrumental in securing the short-lived coalition between UNIP and the ANC in January 1963. In January 1964, Kaunda formed Northern Rhodesia's first Black cabinet, and gave Chona the post of Minister of Justice in UNIP's pre-independence government.