This Is Zambia

Formerly called Northern Rhodesia as an integral part of Cecil Rhodes’ Cape to Cairo vision, Zambia is in fact steeped in history dating all the way back to the African Stone Age. However, in many ways the famous Scottish missionary David Livingstone put the country on the European map as he came to the shores of Lake Tanganyika in search of the source of the Nile in the early 19th century.

Whilst Zambia is now one of Africa’s most urbanised countries, much of the country remains wild, underdeveloped and unspoilt, with a great percentage of land allocated by the government to conservation projects, national parks and game management areas. Many of these parks are home to incredible numbers of Africa’s most-feted wild mammals and extraordinary birdlife.

Zambia’s remaining open rural areas are, for the most part, rich and fertile, with Zambia’s consistently warm tropical climate made less oppressive by the altitude of many parts of the country. One of the most water rich countries in Africa, Zambia has 5 vast lakes, 3 major rivers, 17 waterfalls and various wetland areas. .

Many of Zambia’s 72 ethnic groups still inhabit these rural areas, relying on subsistence farming to get by.

Zambia is one of the fastest growing economies on the African continent and tourism is crucial to the country’s on-going development.

Climate 

The general height of the land gives Zambia a more pleasant climate than that experienced in most tropical countries. There are three seasons – cool and dry from May to August, hot and dry from September to November, and warm and wet from December to April. Only in the Valleys of the Zambezi and Luangwa is there excessive heat, particularly in October and, in the wet season, a high humidity. In the warm wet season, frequent heavy showers and thunderstorms occur, followed by spells of bright sunshine. Plants grow profusely and rivers and streams fill up almost overnight. During the cool dry season, night frosts may occur in places sheltered from the wind. The countryside dries up gradually and grass fires, fanned by high winds are a feature of this time of the year. In depressions, frost can occur on cloudless nights. Temperatures rise high during the hot, dry season but new leaves appear on the trees before the start of the rains and new grass brightens the countryside. The main growing period of woody vegetation is between August and November.

Rainfall

While the rainfall pattern over the whole country is similar – between November and March, the amount of rain varies considerably. The climate is affected most by the movement of the inter-tropical convergence zone, which is the meeting place of the sub-tropical high pressure areas of the northern and southern hemispheres. Over the sea, this zone approximates to the equator, and when the sun is overhead at the equator, heavy rains may fall in the equatorial regions of Africa. The zone moves southward with the apparent movement of the sun in the southern summer and brings rain to the greater part of Zambia. In the north of the country rainfall is 1250mm/ (50 inches) or more a year, decreasing southwards to Lusaka where it is about 750mm/ 30 inches annually. South of Lusaka rainfall is dictated more by the east and Southeast trade winds, which have lost much of their humidity by the time they have reached so far inland. Rainfall in this area is between 500 and 75omm / 20 and 30 inches.

In exceptional years the influence of the inter tropical zone is felt much farther to the south, resulting in excessive rain in the Southern Province and partial drought in the north. Except for very rare falls in August, rainfall is confined to the wet season, which sometimes starts as early as October and finishes as early as March. At the height of the wet season it rains on seven or eight days out of ten. Average temperatures are moderated by the height of the plateau. Maxima vary from 15oC to 27oC in the cool season with morning and evening temperatures as low as 6oC to 10oC and occasional frost on calm nights in valleys and hollows which are sheltered from the wind. In the cool season the prevailing wind, dry south easterlies come from the southern hemisphere belt of high pressure. Invasions of cold air from the south-east bring cloudy to overcast conditions. During the hot season maximum temperatures may range from 27oC to 35oC.

The table below shows annual rainfall and representative maximum and minimum temperatures during the hottest and coldest months of the year respectively. It can be seen that annual temperature variation is greatest at Livingstone, the most southerly town, and the smallest at Mbala, the town nearest the equator. Zambia’s vegetation is of the savanna type and over half the country is covered by trees, varying from the more open conditions in the drier south to tall dense woodlands in the north and north-west. These woodlands contain only hardwoods. The trees are bare for a brief period only and the spring leaves appear before the start of the rains. Grass fires spread rapidly in the dry season but new blades of grass soon push through the blackened earth. Zambia’s climate makes possible the cultivation of a wide range of crops; maize, tobacco, cotton, rice, wheat and groundnuts. All kinds of vegetables can be grown, together with citrus fruit, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, avocados and even grapes. Lichis are also a high potential export crop. Tea and coffee are also grown successfully in fact the coffee produced is of a very high quality. Sugar cane is grown both by villagers and commercially.

History

The Great Rift Valley, which cleaves the earth from the Lower Zambezi River in Southern Zambia to the headwaters of the Nile in Egypt, is now known to be one of the cradles of the human race, and Zambia’s present population lives on lands that have been inhabited by our forebears for uncountable aeons.

Archaeologists have established that in the northern African Rift Valley, the civilizing process got underway at least 3 million years ago, and crude stone implements, similar to some of that age found in Kenya, have also been found beside the Zambezi River.

Early stone age sites have been unearthed in many parts of Zambia, the most significant being at the Kalambo Falls in the North and at Victoria Falls in the south. At the former there is evidence that primitive humans began using fire systematically some 60,000 years ago. At the latter, a complex has been fully exposed showing the development of skills from the most distant past (this ‘dig’ is enclosed at the Field Museum at the Victoria Falls).

The skull of Broken Hill Man, dated to 70,000 years ago, gives an indication of what humans of that period looked like.

It was during the next phase – the middle Stone Age – with its refinement in the manufacture of tools, differentiation between populations, and burial of the dead, that modern man probably emerged in Zambia, at least 25 000 years ago.

We may imagine family groups of small-statured people living near water and sustaining themselves by hunting the abundant game as well as gathering fruits, tubers and honey from their surroundings (some skulls show serious tooth decay caused by honey?) They would often be on the move, following the antelope as they migrated with the seasons. By 15,000 years ago, the Late Stone Age commenced.

People began to live in caves and rock shelters, the walls of which they decorated with paintings. Very few of these have survived Zambia’s seasonally humid climate, and those which have, do not display the sophistication found in the Rock Art found in Zimbabwe or South Africa. But a surviving drawing of an eland at Katolola in the Eastern Province suggests that this art was more than decorative, that it had a ritual or religious meaning: it has been shown in South Africa that this animal was sacred to the Late Stone Age people there.

This spiritual and artistic development occurred alongside another, the invention of the bow and arrow, which revolutionised hunting and also gave humans a mechanical weapon of war, a musical instrument, and a method of starting fire! It has been determined that the people of the Late Stone Age neither tilled the soil nor kept livestock.

New Arrivals

The Zambian Stone Age people probably resembled the present-day San, but towards the end of the period here, there is evidence, from skeletal remains of Negroid physical features, that the hegemony of the aboriginal population was coming to an end. During the centuries between 300 BC and AD 400 Zambia was gradually taken over by Negroid people, who by the later date had occupied the whole country. This was achieved slowly, which allowed the earlier way of life to persist into the present era. 

The European Factor

The wealth of the Indian Ocean trade was one of the elements (another was to spread Christianity) that in the 15th Century inspired the Portuguese, who had recently reconquered their country from Muslim Moors, to embark on their bold ‘Voyages of Discovery’. 

Invasions from the South

Perhaps as a response to foreign intrusions in southern Africa, Shaka of the Zulu and Nguni clan, set about creating a centralized militaristic state in the early 19th century. Surrounding peoples who did not voluntarily agree to absorption into the growing Zulu empire had no option but to flee for survival. Three of these groups were to make a forceful impact on Zambia, 1500 km to the north of the Zulu heartland in eastern South Africa. 

Missionaries and Colonisers

In 1840 David Livingstone, a 27 year old Scottish doctor and ordained minister, sailed from Britain to the Cape to work as a medical evangelist with the London Missionary Society. He was to open central Africa to the gaze of British imperialists. Meanwhile, Portugal was planning to consolidate its African territories by uniting Angola and Mozambique across the central plateau. 

Empire

With considerable help from both Coillard and Dupont, the British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes’ British South African Company (BSAC) had been able to take over the whole of Zambia by the end of the 19th century: that Frenchmen should have served the British Empire so well is one of the quirks of history! 

King Copper

The discovery and opening up during the late 1920s and 1930s of the rich underground ore bodies along the Zambian Copperbelt were soon to make that small region – 120 km long by 40 km wide – one of the worlds’ most concentrated and renowned mining areas.  

Federation

The nationalist movement was given impetus in the early 1950s when the Colonial Office agreed to have Northern Rhodesia joined in a federation with Nyasaland (Malawi), a British ‘protectorate’, and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Southern Rhodesia, under White settler rule, was bankrupt, and saw Northern Rhodesia, with its copper wealth as, to quote one of its political figures, a ‘milch cow’. 

Independence and Democracy

The Federation was dissolved in 1963, its only enduring monument the Kariba Dam across the Zambezi, intended by the federalists to bind Northern and southern Rhodesia forever. In January the following year Zambia’s first universal adult suffrage elections were held and though the ANC performed well in a few substantial areas, UNIP won convincingly, Kaunda becoming Prime Minister. Then at midnight on 24th October 1964, Zambia became an independent republic with him as president.

The one-party state was abolished and free elections were held in October 1991. Kaunda and UNIP were defeated eighty per cent to twenty per cent by the newly formed Movement for Multi-party Democracy, a broad coalition of different interest groups.

The Zambian People

a population of less than 15 million, Zambia comprises an amazing 72 ethnic groups, most of which are bantu-speaking. About 90% of the population fall into 9 major ethnolinguistic groups: the Nyanja-Chewa; Bemba; Tonga; Tumbuka; Lunda; Luvale; Kaonde; Nkoya; and Lozi.

Zambia is also home to a thriving Asian community, predominantly of Indian and Chinese origin, numbering around 100,000, as well as a number of European expatriates, some of whom were invited to settle in Zambia by the local government having been cast off their farms in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

All this makes Zambia home to a vibrant mix of cultures, traditions and peoples, and Zambia is also widely-considered to be one of the friendliest and most welcoming nations in the world.

Zambian Culture

Zambia’s contemporary culture is a blend of values, norms, material and spiritual traditions of more than 70 ethnically diverse people. Most of the tribes of Zambia moved into the area in a series of migratory waves a few centuries ago. They grew in numbers and many travelled in search of establishing new kingdoms, farming land and pastures.

Before the colonial period, the region now known as Zambia was the home of a number of free states. Each having comprehensive economic links with each other and the outside world along trade routes to the east and west coast of Africa. The main exports were copper, ivory and slaves in exchange for textiles, jewellery, salt and hardware.