"The Origins, Context and Political Significance of the Mushala Rebellion against the Zambian One-Party State"

By presenting a multidimensional reading of Adamson Mushala’s insurgency, the only significant internal armed rebellion against the post-colonial Zambian state, this essay seeks to provide a model through which to understand broader episodes of resistance to the contemporary African state. The paper circumvents the standard depiction of Mushala’s guerrillas as South African-sponsored ‘bandits’ and contends that their movement must be viewed as the precipitate of the complex interaction between local, national and regional forces and structures. While the origins of the rebellion are to be sought in the tension between UNIP and supporters of Katanga in the Lunda district of Mwinilunga in the early 1960s, the adoption of a military strategy on Mushala’s part was a direct consequence of the increasingly authoritarian and unpopular nature of UNIP’s rule during Zambia’s First Republic (1964-1972) and the coeval manoeuvres of Portugal and South Africa. The paper ends with an examination of Mushala’s war in the North-Western Province from 1976 and the threat it posed to the fragile hegemony of the Zambian one-party state.