A Zambian Requiem: Kenneth Kaunda in Collective Memory

Memorialisation can hide the “true past.” Most of the past that is memorialised has political and sentimental significance. This paper attempts to reconstruct Kenneth Kaunda’s historical significance from remembrances about KK. We conceptualise the memorialisation and commemoration of KK using a Zambian mourning process and highlight how remembrances about KK produce a hagiographic narrative. The paper demonstrates that KK’s role in creating a Zambian collective memory based on his Humanism created a knowledge vacuum in Zambian historical memory. Furthermore, the monumentalising of KK seems to encourage forgetfulness but mausoleums also serve a mnemonic function to Zambian collective memory and history. Finally, we argue that the unresolved different remembrances about KK and other dead Zambian presidents has turned Embassy Park into Zambia’s dissonant heritage site.