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Article by Hugh Macmillan, St.
Anthony's College Mainza Chona Matthias Mainza Chona, African nationalist, statesman and lawyer, was born on 21 January 1930 at Nampeyo, near Monze in the Southern Province of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. His father, Hameja Chilala, Chief Chona, was the guardian of a spirit shrine who became a chief of the Tonga people. He was a famous hunter, and died in 1951 of wounds sustained in killing his seventh lion. Mainza Chona's mother,Nkandu (Chinyama), was one of his father's many wives. Chona had his primary education at Chona Out School, Nampeyo, which had been established by the Jesuit Mission at his father's request, and at Chikuni, the Jesuit headquarters. He became and remained a Catholic. After completing his secondary education at Munali Secondary School, Lusaka, in 1951, he worked as an interpreter at the High Court in Livingstone, but his ambition was to become a lawyer. In 1955 he went to London on a scholarship, and studied at Gray's Inn - he was called to the bar in 1958. While in England he spent time with leading African nationalists, including Harry Nkumbula and Kenneth Kaunda, and with London-based supporters of the nationalist cause, such as Simon Zukas, and Doris Lessing, who describes him in a memoir as 'the poet of the group'. On his return to Northern Rhodesia in 1959, Chona was unable to find work as a barrister and entered politics. The African National Congress (ANC) had split in October 1958 when Kenneth Kaunda formed the breakaway Zambia African National Congress (ZANC) - Harry Nkumbula remained leader of the ANC. Chona returned to the country after the banning of ZANC and the detention of Kaunda and other leaders of the new party in March 1959. His challenge to Nkumbula's cautious leadership of the ANC resulted in a further split. In October 1959 Chona became the first president of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), the successor to ZANC, which was to lead Northern Rhodesia to independence in 1964. He saw himself as a caretaker leader and stepped down when Kaunda was released from prison in January 1960. He was elected deputy-president at a conference later in the month, but left the country to avoid a charge of sedition - he was to remain in London as the overseas representative of the party for over a year. He served as a UNIP delegate to the Federal Review Conference in London in December 1960 and returned home in February 1961. He was elected national secretary of the party in June 1961 - a post he held for eight years. He played a major rolein securing the short-lived alliance between UNIP and the ANC in January 1963. He became an MP and minister of justice in UNIP's pre-independence government in January 1964, Minister of Home Affairs at independence in October 1964, minister without portfolio in 1967, and vice-president in November 1970. He played a leading part in the organisation of UNIP before and after independence, but he is, perhaps, best remembered for the eponymous Chona Commission, which was set up under his chairmanship in February 1972 to make recommendations for the constitution of a 'one-party participatory democracy'. UNIP had decided to establish a one-party state in December 1971 after the banning of Simon Kapwepwe's United Progressive Party and the detention of its leader. The commission's terms of reference did not permit it to discuss the pros and cons of this decision. The surviving opposition party, the ANC, boycotted the commission and unsuccessfully challenged the constitutional change in the courts. The Chona Report, which was based on four months of public hearings and submitted in October 1972, was, nevertheless, widely regarded as a 'liberal' document. The Second Republic was inaugurated in December 1972, but the National Assembly did not approve the new constitution until August 1973. This asserted the supremacy of the party, but did not include the commission's more liberal recommendations, which would have limited detention without trial, restricted the president to two five-year terms, and shared the president's executive powers with a prime minister. They would also have required electoral competition for the post of president, and prevented him from vetoing parliamentary candidates. Although many of the report's recommendations were ignored, it had a lasting influence. It was cited during the debate on the return to multi-party democracy in 1990-1, and again during the campaign to stop President Chiluba running for a third term in 2001. Chona was prime minister, a new post that was clearly subordinate to that of president, from 1973 to 1975. He served for a second time from 1977-8 after a spell as minister of legal affairs and attorney general. He became secretary-general of UNIP in 1978 and remained in that position, which ranked second to that of president, until February 1981. By the later 1970s it was clear that he was increasingly out of sympathy with at least some of Kaunda's policies. He was seen as the leader within the Central Committee of a predominantly Catholic faction that successfully opposed Kaunda's promotion of 'scientific socialism', or Marxism, as an ideology allied to Zambian 'Humanism'. After he was dropped from the Central Committee he returned briefly to private practice. His appointment as ambassador to China in 1984 was seen by many, possibly including himself, as exile and a punishment posting for an avowed anti-communist, but Paris, where he served as ambassador from 1989-92, was more congenial. On his return to Zambia he again entered private practice. He was associated as a lawyer with the Oasis Forum which successfully opposed President Chiluba's attempt to run for a third term as president. He died in Johannesburg on 11 December 2001. Mainza Chona was widely respected in Zambia as a good administrator and as Kaunda's loyal lieutenant, whose modesty and self-deprecating humour concealed his real ability. He appeared to lack personal ambition, but he made a major contribution to the organisation of UNIP and the struggle for independence. He played a controversial part in the establishment of the one-party state, but was typically shrewd in producing a report on the subject that has in some respects stood the test of time. He did not enrich himself through political office and never lost the common touch. He had a deep interest in Tonga culture, language and history - his Chitonga novel, Kabuca Uleta Tunji, was awarded the Margaret Wrong Medal in 1956 - but he was not a chauvinist. A devoted family man, with deep religious convictions, he married Yolanta Chimbamu in May 1953, and they had seven children, two boys and five girls. His daughter, Elizabeth Muyovwe, is a judge of the High Court. His brother, Mark Chona, has also played a prominent part in Zambian political and public life. Hugh Macmillan, St Antony's College. |
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