When a little, pint-sized politician called Frederick Chiluba beat him to the presidency in 1991, Kenneth Kaunda (KK) was among the first victims of the new political dispensation across the African continent. Competitive politics was upon the old order, and the maestros who had ruled the roost for decades were now facing challenges from forces they had relegated to oblivion.
To Kaunda, president of Zambia for near three decades, Chiluba was a man of no consequence, a troublesome labour organiser, physically too small for his ambitions. In typical southern African psychology, political power sits well with bodily heft, and Chiluba simply did not cut the figure.
