Betty Kaunda: ‘A wonderful girl’

Dr Kaunda singing a love song to Betty during my interview with her in 2007

On Tuesday September 19, Mama Betty Kaunda, wife of Zambia’s first president Dr Kenneth Kaunda, died in her sleep in Zimbabwe. A media-shy woman throughout her life, Mama Betty rarely gave interviews. Jack Zimba got one of those rare moments with Mama Betty and now reflects on her life.

Mama Betty Kaunda or just Betty, as she was fondly known, was not born for the limelight. In fact, as she told me in a rare interview five years ago, she hated the blaring sirens of the presidential motorcade and the heavy security that went with it. And she hated the flashing and clicking of the cameras of a prying media.

“I never liked it. I never, never, never,” she told me matter-of-factly.

And as first lady, she chose to play a supportive role to her husband who, for almost three decades, had a larger-than-life presence in the country and internationally. Betty was always a step behind her husband, not wanting to involve herself in the politics of running the country.

“I advised him, but just in small things,” she told me. “I also advised him on things concerning the family, but not on national issues. I never interfered.”

To Betty, it seems, running her home was more important than anything else and that is where she made a lasting impression, raising the couple’s nine children while the president made numerous travels away from home on national duty.

In his book, Letter to My Children, Dr Kaunda acknowledged the fact that he spent little time at home and that it was Betty who bore much of the burden of raising the children.

“Those of you who are older,” he wrote, “will remember the stirring days of the freedom struggle when I was always on the move, travelling around the country, even popping in and out of goal while your mother tried to keep a roof over your heads and something in your bellies. Now that Zambia is a free nation, things don’t seem much better: our family is still in turmoil. I’m no longer on the run, but I am certainly kept on the trot - throughout Zambia and beyond.” 

Betty took the role of motherhood seriously and she kept the family together through some great difficulties during the struggle for independence which happened in 1964. 

Betty Kaunda as a young lady.

In 1954, for example, life had become tough for the Kaunda family and so Betty resorted to making and selling charcoal to support her family while her first-born son, Panji, worked as a caddie at the Lusaka Golf Club in-between school to supplement her mother’s efforts. She had wanted to leave, overwhelmed by those challenges, but her mother told her to stay. She did and soon the couple had their fourth child, aptly named Tilyenji.

Betty was proud of the way she raised her children.

“I raised good children because I was with them full-time,” she said.

Betty also fancied herself as a great cook, though as first lady she was never really allowed to do the cooking herself, not even for her husband. The family had a coterie of workers – cooks, maids and drivers – at their disposal. 

Although she hated that sort of life, likening it to a prison, she eventually got used to it. “No washing, no sweeping, no cooking. You just run the water to bath,” she said.

And she enjoyed being first lady. “It was very nice,” she said.

She mentioned her shopping trips to London, for that is where she had her chitenge suits made by Ghanian tailors. On Dr Kaunda’s request, she had completely abandoned her Western suits because he wanted her to look African.

She also enjoyed the company of some high-profile women, some of whom she counted as friends, like Graca Machel the wife of Mozambican president Samora Machel. But when Graca got married to Nelson Mandela in July 1998, the two friends drifted apart.

She also named Cecilia Kazamira, who was at that time Malawi’s de facto first lady (she was president Kamuzu Banda’s friend and not wife) as one of the people she was close with.

But Betty knew that kind of lifestyle would not last forever, a point she also emphasized to her children.

“I knew that one day we would enter a new life,” she said.

In 1991 when her husband was defeated in multiparty elections, Betty accepted the change that life outside State House brought.

However, she talked about how the family was treated afterwards, being made to move houses three times and not having a car of her own because the cars were taken away from them by the state.

“The thing that upset me most was that they grabbed all the cars. I had a small car, they took the small car. I took it with me outside State House, but they sent a driver to come and pick it. I was very upset,” she said.

“Then we had a car which was given by Saddam Hussein, we left it there. I told my husband to get that car, but he said ‘no leave it.’”

Betty expressed a deep desire to go and live in Chinsali in the mansion the state built for the first family, but she also knew the place would not be ideal for her husband with the work that he was involvement in. And she herself needed to be near a good hospital because of her health condition.

For four decades, Betty had been a diabetic, a condition that later in her life had caused her to suffer a stroke, making her movement difficult. She usually relied on a wheelchair.

Two events, both tragic, had also left Betty’s heart deeply scarred. One was the death of her son, Masugzyo, who succumbed to AIDS in the mid-1980s. The other was the cold-blooded killing of her third-born son, Wezi, in what many, including the Kaunda family, believe was a state-managed murder by the Chiluba regime.

“That was very painful,” she said.

A strict mother

Of all that she ever was, Betty was a moralist - a bit old-fashioned maybe - who stuck to the belief that women were not supposed to wear trousers. And she saw to it that no girl wore trousers in her home, including her two daughters Cheswa and Musata.

“Even as little girls, she made us wear nightdresses to bed,” Cheswa, who is now 48, told me.

To this day, the two ‘girls’ still won’t wear trousers before their father. The weekend before her mother died, I had watched Cheswa see off her father at his office in Kabulonga where she also works. Behind her father’s back she removed the chitenge she had used to cover the pair of jeans trousers she was wearing before jumping into her car. Her mother’s teaching had not worn off all these years.

Betty expressed deep sadness and fear at the growing influence of the Western culture.  

“This nation is going to be a lost nation years to come,” she told me, her voice filled with concern. “We have stopped wearing dresses, we’re wearing trousers and sometimes we want to be like ba zungu, but we are Africans.”

“But even if I feel sad, it’s not helping me,” she said.

She, herself, talked strongly about how she grew up as a “very good girl”.

Betty nee Banda was born in Chinsali in what is now Muchinga Province on 17^th November 1928. Her father, Kaweche Banda, was a storekeeper for a popular chain store called Mandala.

But she grew up in the neighbouring town of Mpika, and it was also here that she started her school, aged 11.

She later went to Mbereshi where she completed her studies, returning to Mpika in 1946.

Her father wanted her to travel to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to study nursing, but her mother refused to let her go.

In 1946 Helen, Dr Kaunda’s mother, took notice of Betty while visiting her parents’ home. It was actually Mama Helen who chose her as a bride for her last born son, Kenneth.

That act had perhaps left a big impression on Betty and built a strong bond between her and Mama Helen. She usually spoke very highly of her mother-in-law.

“She was the best mother-in-law,” she said.

Even the couple’s first meeting was somehow arranged by Mama Helen, who had also played the role of midwife at Betty’s birth.

Betty recounted the couple’s first meeting with a sparkle in her eyes.  

“The first time I met him he was coming from a scouts meeting,” Betty told me.

She described him as a “tall, handsome and smart boy” in scouts’ uniform.

But there was even more about the young Kenneth that enchanted Betty – his ability to play the guitar.

“He played so well,” she said.

And for Betty, maybe it was love at first sight. “When I saw this young teacher, I was interested,” she said.

“My dream, when I was a little girl, was to get married to a teacher. Nobody else.”

And on August 26, 1946, Betty’s dream came to pass when she and Dr Kaunda tied the knot in what was the first ever white wedding in the small town of Mpika.

Betty wore a floral dress with a train made from material cut from a mosquito net.

“It was really nice,” she said.

Her father, who was also a hunter, had gotten permission from the district commissioner to fire his riffle into the air to celebrate his daughter’s marriage.

To Betty, that gun salute was the best moment during the wedding.

Unfortunately, there is not a single photograph to show the couple’s happy union.

One man was supposedly taking pictures of the wedding ceremony, but when he was approached for the photos afterwards, he revealed his mischievous did – he didn’t actually have any film on his camera.

“I was very disappointed,” Betty said, although she still found that account humorous.

Betty’s marriage to Dr Kaunda lasted six decades, although the president’s numerous travels then and after leaving office meant the couple spent a lot of time apart.

She sometimes disapproved of her husband’s numerous travels, especially after leaving State House.

“He always wants to work I don’t know why?” she said. And yet she still understood his passion.

“He likes travelling and that helps him to be strong,” she said. “If he stops travelling, he is going to be sick.”

“Sometimes I want him to go. I want to be happy alone. It’s nice to be free,” she said.

And yet the two always seemed inseparable.

“Time is gone now for us to separate ourselves... No. We have to be together all the time. Time counts now. We’ve been together for a long time now,” she said.

To Betty, being married to Dr Kaunda was the best thing in the world.

“I married a wonderful man. He has never beaten me; not even a single day,” she told me.

And, yes, she was, truly, his better half.

Betty talked about their friendship. “We’re like brother and sister now,” she said.

Dr Kaunda usually preferred calling Betty “my girl”, although she objected to being called that sometimes. “I’m too old now,” she said.

Betty, on the other hand, like most of the people surrounding the former president, usually called him by his assumed title, “The Old Man” or “ba Shikulu”.

And she made fun of his bent frame and bald head. “He used to be tall with nice hair, but now he’s bending,” she said amidst bursts of laughter.

That they were truly in love was, perhaps, without doubt.

Dr Kaunda always sung the love song Pagan Moon to Betty to express his love for her.

The song talked about kissing and lying in each others’ arms under the moon.

Dr Kaunda learned the song from his Polish teacher in 1941 and he sung it for Betty during their brief courtship and a countless times thereafter – on her birthdays, his own birthdays and any celebration where he had an opportunity to sing. A few months ago, when the couple celebrated their 66 years of marriage, Dr Kaunda, his once mighty and intimidating voice now croaky with age, did a rendition of the Pagan Moon for his adoring wife. Betty’s reaction to the ballad was almost always the same – she would curl up and break into giggles like a teenage girl. Dab her eyes to stop a tear or two from rolling down her cheeks.

Sometimes, though, she tried to stop him. “He shouldn’t sing about me because now I’m too old,” she said.

Of course that never stopped Dr Kaunda from singing the song, which seemed to have the same effect on him as on her.

And in what seemed like a real romantic ending to a love story, the last time Dr Kaunda sang the song for Betty was the night she died. Dr Kaunda was in South Africa to receive a peace award from the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation and Betty was in Zimbabwe visiting with their daughter, Musata.

“My wife of many years is not here to listen to the song, but my daughter (Cheswa) who is here with me will listen for her,” Dr Kaunda told the audience at the award ceremony.

The following morning the news of Betty’s passing was broken to Dr Kaunda as he prepared to return to Zambia. He was a broken man.

When I asked the former president - five years ago - how he wanted Betty to be remembered, he cast a thoughtful look on her and said: “A wonderful girl.”