Voting for Unity

Four years and two months from the day it finally won kwacha -- freedom -- Zambia last week held its first parliamentary election as a sovereign state.

To allow their people to vote, employers in urban centers -- from store owners to white housewives -- staggered working hours. Queues formed outside polling stations in the capital of Lusaka at daylight as people hurried to town. In rural areas, men and women went to the polling stations -- in some in stances only coarse hemp wrapped around a square of gumpoles -- through the jungle and bush and across plains flooded by heavy rains. They arrived by donkey, on bicycles, in wooden-wheeled oxcarts and World War I jalopies, or came clutching the sides of slim leaky boats hewn from tree trunks.

Misguided Mentor. The tramp of 1,000,000 eligible Zambians to the polls was indeed a stirring demonstration of what President Kenneth Kaunda calls "the cause of the common man." Although there were battles and at least 25 deaths in pre-election campaigning, Kaunda was determined that such internecine struggle should be ended after election day. "I have no doubt," he said, "that young Zambia will be one of those few countries to break the nasty record in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where post-independence elections have brought some kind of confusion."

Kaunda, certain of re-election as President, was actually being rather two-faced. To avoid confusion, the 44-year-old father of his country (and nine of its children) is utilizing the election to turn Zambia peaceably into a one-party state. The party, of course, is his own United National Independent Party.

Kaunda hoped last week to make the transformation at the polls democratically. Of the 105 parliamentary seats on the ballots, 30 are already held by unopposed U.N.I.P. members. Harry Nkumbula, who was once Kaunda's political tutor and whose African National Congress was his only real opposition, charged that his candidates were barred from filing for those seats. In addition, Nkumbula was rousted out of bed in Lusaka before dawn one morning while police searched his house for weapons. The ostensible reason was that thugs from Nkumbula's party rather than foreign intruders had been responsible for a series of raids along the Angola border in which 14 Zambian villages were burned. On television and in stump speeches, Kaunda in velvety tones accused his old mentor of having become "a misguided political adventurer."

Principle and Pocketbook. If Kaunda fails to arouse the nation to vote his ticket overwhelmingly, he intends to eliminate other parties by parliamentary means. The President is certain, when the new Parliament meets next month, of the two-thirds majority necessary for a constitutional amendment abolishing all parties except his own.

Kaunda maintains that one-party rule is necessary because Zambia is being needlessly fragmented by the politics of 72 continually quarrelsome tribes. At the same time, he will no longer have to listen to telling charges by opponents like Nkumbula that his decision to honor United Nations sanctions against neighboring Rhodesia has been nice for principle but hard on the pocketbook. Since Kaunda refuses to buy as much as he once did from Rhodesia, he has had to go as far afield as Japan and the U.S. for food, tobacco, lubricants, fabrics and automobiles. Not only are prices higher on such imports but the easiest way to get them into landlocked Zambia is still over Rhodesian rail lines. Nkumbula insists that it would be better for Zambia economically to forget principle and deal again with Rhodesia and South Africa.

Another Viet Nam. On another front, however, a single party may prove advantageous. Along with restoring Kaunda's sagging father figure, it will unite Zambians for what may be bitter innings ahead with their white neighbors. At least two groups of African guerrillas are training inside Zambia to attack Rhodesia, Angola or Mozambique.

Kaunda insists that Zambia has nothing to do with the guerrillas, but he has made no move to turn them out.

Meanwhile Portuguese air force planes violate Zambian air space at will, seeking out the guerrillas and attacking them. Kaunda has begun to warn mysteriously of "another Viet Nam." He has opened negotiations with Italian and British companies for helicopters, antiaircraft missiles and a new $12 million airbase for the tiny Zambian air force. Too many political parties would only slow the course of such planning.

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