Edition: U.S. / Global

Zambia Arrests Former President In Crackdown After Failed Coup

Published: December 26, 1997

The former President of Zambia, Kenneth D. Kaunda, was arrested by paramilitary policemen early this morning as part of a Government crackdown on opposition leaders after an attempted coup in October.

The arrest of Mr. Kaunda, the 73-year-old statesman who led the country to independence in 1964, is likely to heighten political tensions in Zambia, where people have been living for two months under what amounts to a police state and where a siege mentality seems to have infected the ruling party.

More than 90 soldiers and several opposition politicians have been jailed since President Frederick T. J. Chiluba declared a state of emergency in late October after loyal troops crushed a rebellion by a handful of mutinous soldiers. Under the emergency declaration, the police have wide powers to detain people for 28 days without charges.

''They are determined to make sure that they use this coup as an opportunity to detain Mr. Kaunda, to humiliate him, and endanger him, maybe even kill him,'' Mr. Kaunda's press secretary, Muhabi Lungu, said this morning. ''All of this is aimed at squashing the opposition. They want to use this opportunity to crack down on anyone who has a voice in this country.''

Government officials did not immediately explain why the police had detained Mr. Kaunda. But the detention this morning of the man most Zambians see as the founding father of their country is only the latest development in a long personal struggle between the two men.

Politically, they have been at each other's throats since Mr. Chiluba defeated Mr. Kaunda in the nation's first multiparty elections in 1991, ending the older politician's 27-year reign as Zambia's strongman. When he was arrested, Mr. Kaunda had only been home two days after a lengthy lecture tour abroad.

When the coup attempt took place on Oct. 28, Mr. Kaunda was in South Africa. He and other opposition leaders have repeatedly accused Mr. Chiluba of staging the takeover as a pretext to crack down on his opponents. For several weeks, Mr. Kaunda chose to remain in Zimbabwe rather than return home. One reason was the widespread speculation in Zambia that he would be arrested in connection with the coup plot if he returned. He has denied any involvement in the coup attempt, although Government officials have indicated they suspect he had a role in it. Despite his fears, on Tuesday he drove back to his home in Lusaka's northern suburb of Roma to celebrate Christmas with his family, his aides said.

Just before dawn this morning, Mr. Lungu said, more than 60 policemen dressed in battle fatigues and armed with assault rifles surrounded Mr. Kaunda's home. A three-hour standoff ensued, during which Mr. Kaunda's aides stalled the police with a request for a search warrant.

Then, at 8:20 A.M., the former President agreed to go down to the main police headquarters for questioning, Mr. Lungu said. But an hour after he arrived, Mr. Kaunda was hustled into a police car and taken to the Kamwala holding prison. The police formed a cordon around the jail to keep his supporters away. Before disappearing into the prison, Mr. Kaunda told reporters he had been notified that he would be detained for 28 days and did not know why. He said the detention ''doesn't make sense,'' and added, ''I appeal to everyone to remain calm.''

The police stood on guard throughout the capital's streets in an unusual display of force, perhaps to deter Mr. Kaunda's supporters from protesting, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Kaunda's arrest is a humiliating moment for a leader who was for decades revered as an elder statesman in Zambia. Known for a warm personality and colorful habits, like his trademark white handkerchief that he always waves at public events, he led the nationalist movement for independence from Britain in what was then called Northern Rhodesia. A leader in the fight against apartheid, he espoused a nonviolent approach.

His one-party rule came to an end in 1991 when a tired and impoverished electorate rejected his United National Independence Party in the country's first all-party elections. Years of economic decline and a drop in demand for Zambia's main resource, copper, fanned the sentiment for political change. Mr. Chiluba, who was the head of a powerful trade union, easily won the elections with a campaign to bring multiparty democracy to what had been an autocratic, one-party state.

But unlike others among the first generation of African leaders who were removed over the last ten years, Mr. Kaunda refused to retire from politics after his defeat. Mr. Chiluba, for his part, has been threatened by Mr. Kaunda's continued popularity in some parts of the country. Over the years, his Government has taken increasingly repressive steps to keep the elder statesman's party from regaining power.

The feud between the two men has become extremely personal and ugly. Mr. Chiluba, a born-again Christian who often cites the will of God as his only political guide, frequently talks about Mr. Kaunda as if he were the personification of the devil.

Before the elections last year, Mr. Chiluba pushed though amendments to the Constitution that made it impossible for Mr. Kaunda to stand as a candidate because his parents were not born in Zambia. Then, when a shadowy terrorist group known as Black Mamba set off a series of small bombs in the early stages of the election, Mr. Chiluba's administration blamed the violence on Mr. Kaunda's supporters and arrested several leaders of his party, keeping them in jail during the campaign without trial.

In August, shots were fired at Mr. Kaunda's car as he was traveling to a political rally in the copper belt town of Kabwe. The former head of state was slightly wounded. He has accused the police of trying to assassinate him, while Mr. Chiluba's aides have suggested the wounds were self-inflicted.

Then came the coup. On Oct. 28, Zambians woke to a man calling himself Captain Solo announcing on the state radio that he had taken over the country and would give President Chiluba until 9 A.M. to surrender or be killed. Shortly after that, gunfire was heard outside the radio and television complex and State House, the President's residence.

By 9 A.M. a military commander announced on another station in the complex that the coup had been quelled, and an hour later, President Chiluba went on the air to say that six plotters had been arrested and that people should return to work.

But within days, Mr. Chiluba had declared a state of emergency and had begun rounding up opposition leaders and military officers, holding them without trial. Among them was Dean Mungomba, a presidential candidate and the leader of the Zambian Democratic Congress. Amnesty International has accused the police of torturing Mr. Mungomba and other detained suspects.

Mr. Kaunda's son, Wezi Kaunda, who was with his father when he was arrested, told the Associated Press he feared his father would also be tortured. ''I think something very serious will happen if they took him into detention,'' he said.

Photo: Kenneth D. Kaunda, the former President of Zambia, in the custody of paramilitary police officers in Lusaka after he was arrested yesterday. (Associated Press)(pg. A10) Map of Zambia showing location of Lusaka: An attempted coup is said to have taken place in Lusaka in October. (pg. A10)