Zambia National Political Development 1890-2001

Most of the African countries achieved their independence through the national movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and had experienced very similar political development process in the next short decades. Despite of the countries' independence, due to restriction of the natural conditions and historical reasons, they are still suffering from disasters, poverty and war troubles. Western developed countries had been regarding Africa as a test field and as a strength competition's platform, and forcibly grafting their experience, model and ideology onto various countries. Therefore, Africa had always been an international focus. Among the African countries, being a landlocked country in southern Africa, Zambia gained its independence in 1964 and experienced regime changes from multi-party and then one-party to multi-party again, which was very representative in African countries. Meanwhile, the war did not happen in various stages of Zambian development, but its regime had been achieved through peaceful elections and constitutional reform, and characterized by its uniqueness.The author shows great interests to Zambian economic and political development process that are both generally representative and has its own specific characteristics. In terms of Zambian political system changes, almost all western scholars and African academics amazingly have the same views that the accuracy and advancement of multi-party system in Zambia are absolute, multi-party system has played a tremendous role in promoting Zambian development, one-party system established by Regime Kaunda is a backward step, and the collapse of one-party in 1991 and restoration of multi-party system symbolize that Zambian political development returns to its right track. Through collecting and reading a large number of Zambian historical and political literatures, the author personally thinks that this view is not objective, full of bias and has obvious limitations. This paper attempts to sort out Zambian history from the colonial time to the beginning of this century in several aspects that affect the Zambian political development like economic changes, political party development, ethnic group issues and intervention of Western countries, and explores its political development sequence and proves the rationality and necessity of Zambian political process.