ZAMBIA, FLAG OF

national flag consisting of a green field with an orange eagle and vertical stripes of red, black, and orange at the fly end. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3. In 1930 a shield was approved for Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Its black and white wavy vertical stripes represented Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River in traditional heraldic style; the blue chief (upper portion) of the shield featured a gold fish eagle with a silver fish in its claws. The design, first used on the British Blue Ensign as a colonial badge, received approval as a coat of arms on August 16, 1939. Later, Northern Rhodesia began its advance toward independence under the leadership of the United National Independence Party (UNIP). The green field of its flag, symbolizing agriculture, bore the letter U for ubuntungwa (freedom) in red, a colour indicating readiness to shed blood for that goal. The yellow border referred to the copper industry on which economic development was based, while a traditional native hoerepresented in black over the Urecalled the majority population of the country and the importance of its labour. When the Republic of Zambia achieved independence on October 24, 1964, its new national flag was based on the UNIP flag. The green background remains, and the other three colours appear as stripes at the fly endred for the freedom struggle, black for the African people, and orange for copper. Over them flies an orange fish eagle corresponding to the one in the arms of 1939. Officially it symbolizes freedom and the ability of the Zambian people to rise above national problems. Whitney Smith History Archaeology and early history Stone tools attributable to early types of man have been found near the Victoria Falls and in the far northeast, near Kalambo Falls. In 1921, excavations at Kabwe revealed the almost complete skull of Homo sapiens rhodesiensis (Broken Hill Man), which may be well over 100,000 years old. However, by 20,000 BC the only surviving type of human throughout the Old World was the ancestor of modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens, who developed the use of spears, the bow and arrow, game traps, and grindstones. Remains of such industries have been found in much of central and northern Zambia, sometimes near lakes and rivers but often in caves and rock-shelters. During the 1st millennium AD, Zambia was occupied by migrants from farther north who may be presumed to have spoken Bantu languages; they certainly cultivated crops and kept domestic stock. Traces of ironworking in central and western Zambia have been dated to the first five or six centuries AD. Iron tools and weapons greatly increased mastery over both man and nature and, together with food production, promoted population growth. Stone-using hunters and gatherers were liable to be overrun and absorbed by the food producers, though some survived on the edges of farming zones until a few centuries ago. The complex layers of paintings found in rock-shelters in northeastern Zambia indicate that the homes of stone-using hunters became the shrines of invading farmers. In central Zambia, by the 6th century AD, the first food producers worked copper as well as iron. By about AD 1000, copper ingots were being made at Kansanshi, at the western end of the Copperbelt, which implies that copper was being traded extensively and perhaps used as currency. Early in the 2nd millennium AD, cattle keeping became more intensive on the Batoka Plateau of southern Zambia, while cotton spinning and pipe smoking were introduced. The associated pottery seems directly ancestral to that made locally in the 20th century. Similar evidence of cultural continuity over a long period has also been found in the resemblance between modern pottery in central, northern, and eastern Zambia and a kind of pottery that has been dated to the 12th century AD. These major changes in pottery traditions have been ascribed to immigration; they also indicate thicker settlement of woodland through the adoption of chitemene cultivation, widespread in Zambia even today: this technique depends heavily on the use of iron axes, because seed is sown in the ashes of branches lopped from trees. In southern Zambia, archaeology has thrown light on both the emergence of class distinctions and the beginnings of trade with the east coast. About the 14th century, a few people were buried wearing ornaments of seashells and exotic glass beads near Kalomo and at Ingombe Ilede, near the confluence of the Zambezi and Kafue. The latter burials also included gold beads, copper ingots, and iron bells of a kind later associated with chieftainship. These metals would have come from south of the Zambezi, but they were probably being reexported down the river by Muslim traders, either Arab or African. The period between about 1500 and 1800 remains relatively obscure. This was when copper was most intensively mined at Kansanshi, but it is not known who was buying it. The main evidence for these centuries consists of oral traditions. In much of Zambia, from the upper Kafue to the Malawi border, there are legends of tribes being founded by chiefly families who came from Luba country in southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). Such stories should not be taken at face value: they dramatize prolonged processes of population drift and the spread of cultural influences. By the 18th century, small-scale chieftainship was probably widespread in northern and eastern Zambia, but few of the tribal names current today would have meant much: such names refer not to long-enduring communities but to changing perceptions of cultural and political differences. In the early 19th century, however, there were at least four areas in which the growth of kingdoms was strengthening the sense of tribal identity: in the east, among the Chewa; in the northeast, among the Bemba; on the lower Luapula, among the Lunda (who had indeed invaded from the west about 1740); and on the upper Zambezi, among the Luyana (later called Lozi). In the Lunda and Luyana kingdoms a prosperous valley environment encouraged dense settlement and prompted the development of relatively centralized government. External contacts Trade between Zambia and the Western world began with the Portuguese in Mozambique. Early in the 17th century, the Portuguese ousted Muslims from the gold trade of central Africa; early in the 18th century, they founded trading posts at Zumbo and Feira, at the confluence of the Zambezi and Luangwa; and by 1762 they were regularly acquiring ivory and copper from Zambians in exchange for cotton cloth. During the later 18th century, slave-owning Goans and Portuguese mined gold and hunted elephants among the southern Chewa. Their activities were reported to Kazembe III, the Lunda king on the Luapula, by Bisa traders who exported his ivory and copper to the Yao in Malawi. Kazembe already had indirect access to European goods from the west coast; he now hoped to cut out his African middlemen. One Goan visited Kazembe and was warmly received, but, though the Portuguese government dispatched further expeditions in 1798 and 1831, they came to nothing, mainly because the Portuguese on the Zambezi were turning their attention to exporting slaves rather than ivory or gold. Western Zambia was also beginning to be enmeshed in the Portuguese slave trade (directed to Brazil): from the early 19th century, African traders from Angola bought slaves to the north of the Lozi kingdom, though the Lozi themselves kept servile labour for production at home. During the second half of the 19th century, Zambia was convulsed by traders, raiders, and invaders who came from north and south as well as east and west. From about 1840 to 1864, the Lozi kingdom was ruled by the Kololo, warrior-herdsmen who had fled north from Sotho country. In the 1860s and '70s the northern Chewa were conquered by a group of Ngoni, who had also come from the far south. Meanwhile, the Bemba and Kazembe's Lunda began selling ivory and slaves to Arabs and Africans from the east coast. At the same time, ivory and slaves were hunted in central Zambia by Chikunda adventurers armed with guns, and South African traders were buying ivory from the Lozi. A few rulers contrived to turn such trade to their own advantage, and the general rise in demand for goods stimulated local production of ironwork, salt, tobacco, and food: indeed, several crops of American origin were introduced, such as corn (maize), cassava, peanuts, and sugarcane. Much of Zambia was devastated by marauders, however. At the end of the 19th century, Zambia came under British rule. British interest in the region had first been aroused by the missionary-explorer David Livingstone, who crossed Zambia during three great expeditions between 1853 and his death, near Lake Bangweulu, in 1873. Livingstone's reports of the expanding slave trade inspired other missionaries to come to central Africa and continue the struggle against it, but it was the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes who ensured that so much country north as well as south of the Zambezi came within a British sphere of influence during the Scramble for Africa. In 1889 the British government granted a charter to Rhodes's British South Africa Company (BSAC), bestowing powers of administration and enabling it to stake claims to African territory at the expense of other European powers. The curious butterfly shape of Zambia resulted from agreements in the 1890s between Britain and Germany, Portugal, and the Belgian king Leopold II, and these in turn rested on treaties, mostly stereotyped in form, between Rhodes's agents and African chiefs. At this stage there was little resistance to white intrusion. The most immediate threat to African land and labour came in Ngoniland, thought by whites to be rich in gold, and the Ngoni duly fought company troops in 1898. The Bemba, however, faced no such challenge and in any case were deeply divided, while the Lozi king believed that alliance with the company would protect his empire against both the Portuguese and the Ndebele. It is also likely that disease and famine undermined the will to resist: there were smallpox epidemics in the early 1890s, widespread rinderpest in 189295, and locust plagues throughout the decade. The economy Zambia's economy is heavily dependent on mining, in particular the mining of copper. Unfortunately, reserves of copper ore at some mines are becoming depleted, costs of production have increased, and the price of copper on the world market has slumped. There is thus a great need to broaden the base of the economy. Agriculture is relatively poorly developed, however, and major investment in manufacturing industry did not take place until after independence. State involvement in all aspects of the economy has been a feature of independent Zambia and has created a highly centralized and bureaucratic economic structure, although changes in the political structure of the country in the early 1990s were accompanied by efforts to increase private investment and involvement, particularly in the industrial sector. Shortly after independence, Zambia embarked on a program of national development planning, the Transitional Development Plan, preceding the First National Development Plan of 196671. This later plan, which provided for major investment in infrastructure and manufacturing, was largely implemented and generally successful (which was not true of subsequent plans). A major switch in the structure of the country's economy came with the Mulungushi Reforms of April 1968, in which the government declared its intention to acquire an equity holding (usually 51 percent or more) in a number of key foreign-owned firms, to be controlled by the Industrial Development Corporation (INDECO). By January 1970 a majority holding had been acquired in the Zambian operations of the two major foreign mining corporations, the Anglo American Corporation and the Rhodesia Selection Trust (RST), which became the Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines (NCCM) and Roan Consolidated Mines (RCM), respectively. A new parastatal body, the Mining Development Corporation (MINDECO), was created. Government control was later extended to insurance companies and building societies, which were placed within a new parastatal body, the Finance and Development Corporation (FINDECO). The banks successfully resisted takeover. INDECO, MINDECO, and FINDECO were brought together in 1971 under an omnibus parastatal, the Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), to create one of the largest companies in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1973 management contracts under which the day-to-day operations of the mines had been carried out by Anglo American and RST were ended. In 1982 NCCM and RCM were merged into the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd. (ZCCM). Programs of nationalization, particularly of the mining industry, were ill-timed. The massive increase in the price of oil in 1973 (which greatly inflated the import bill) was followed by a slump in copper prices in 1975 and a diminution of export earnings. The price of copper, which in 1973 accounted for 95 percent of all export earnings, halved in value on the world market in 1975. By 1976 there was a balance-of-payments crisis, and the country became massively indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There was little hope of putting the proposals of the Third National Development Plan (197883) into effect: crisis management, not long-term planning, was the reality. By the mid-1980s Zambia had become one of the most indebted nations in the world relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). As the price for its continuing support, the IMF was able to insist that the Zambian government introduce programs aimed at stabilizing the economy and restructuring to reduce dependence on copper. Measures included ending price controls, currency devaluation, reductions in government expenditure, the ending of subsidies on food and fertilizer, and increased prices for farm produce. The removal of food subsidies caused massive increases in the price of basic foodstuffs and led to rioting. Unable to cope with internal opposition to the new policies, Zambia broke with the IMF in May 1987, introducing its own New Economic Recovery Programme in 1988; it subsequently moved toward a new understanding with the IMF in 1989. In a major policy turnabout in 1990, reflecting events in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the intention to partially privatize the parastatals was announced. The new government of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, which came into power in November 1991, promised to liberate the economy and introduce a free-market system. The union movement, especially among the mine workers, has been a strong influence on political development since the 1930s, and President Frederick Chiluba, who succeeded the country's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, in 1991, had been leader of the trade union movement. Resources Copper, the basis of Zambia's prosperity in the first decade of independence, is a declining asset. Alternatives such as optical glass fibre have reduced market demand, and exhaustion of reserves in existing mining areas has led to increased costs. Large-scale mining could end by 2005, although small-scale operations will continue long after that. Cobalt occurs in association with copper. Lead and zinc mining at Kabwe began in 1906, predating the large-scale mining of copper. Underground mining at Kabwe has practically ended, although reworking of mine dumps has prolonged activity at the mine. Other minerals worked in Zambia include gold and silver, both of which occur in association with copper. Iron ore is found near Mumbwa. There is an increasing awareness of the value of Zambia's gemstones. Emeralds, mined near Luanshya and Ndola, are cut and polished locally. Amethyst, aquamarine, and tourmaline are also mined. Large deposits of cosmetic-grade talc are found near Ndola and Lusaka. Limestone is widely found on the Copperbelt and in the Lusaka district and is quarried for stone, lime, and cement; associated with it are workable occurrences of marble. The country once relied on coal carried by rail from Hwange in what is now Zimbabwe, but, following Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965, relatively poor-grade coal deposits were developed at Maamba in the Gwembe area, adjacent to Lake Kariba. Although there has been extensive prospecting for oil in the Karoo sediments of the middle Zambezi, the Luangwa, and the southwest, the search has so far been unsuccessful. Nor has prospecting for uranium discovered workable quantities of the ore. There is, however, one rich energy source: hydropower. Large rivers descending from the plateau into the rifted troughs of the Zambezi provide scope for hydropower development, and a major gorge on the middle Zambezi enabled it to be dammed to form Lake Kariba, the world's largest man-made lake of its time. The first power station at Kariba was built on the south side of the river, but a 600-megawatt station on the Zambian side was completed in 1977, shortly after the completion of a 900-megawatt station in the Kafue Gorge, south of Lusaka. There is an earlier power station at the Victoria Falls. Another dam on the Zambezi, which would need the collaboration of Zimbabwe, is projected at Batoka Gorge. Electricity distribution from Kariba extends north to the Copperbelt and southward across Zimbabwe. There are also links with Congo (Kinshasa) and peripheral areas of Botswana and Namibia. The land Relief Most of Zambia forms part of the high plateau of this part of Africa (3,000 to 5,000 feet [900 to 1,500 metres] above sea level); major relief features occur where river valleys and rifted troughs, some lake-filled, dissect its surface. Lake Tanganyika lies some 2,000 feet below the plateau, and the largest rift, that containing the Luangwa River, is a serious barrier to communications. The highest elevations occur in the east, where the Nyika Plateau on the Malawian border is generally over 6,000 feet, rising to more than 7,000 feet in the Mafinga Hills. The general slope of the plateau is toward the southwest, although the drainage of the Zambezi turns eastward to the Indian Ocean. Over most of the country, ancient crystalline rocks are exposed, the product of prolonged erosion processes. In western Zambia they are overlain by younger sandy deposits, relict of a once more extensive Kalahari desert. In central and eastern parts of the country, downwarping of the plateau surface forms swamp- or lake-filled depressions (e.g., Lake Bangweulu, the Lukanga Swamp); in more elevated regions, ridges and isolated hills made up of more resistant rocks punctuate otherwise smooth skylines. Drainage The continental dividebetween the Congo River drainage, which flows to the Atlantic, and that of the Zambezi, which drains into the Indian Oceanruns along the Zambia-Congo (Kinshasa) border west of the Pedicle and then northeastward to the border with Tanzania. Both the Luapula (which drains the Bangweulu basin into Lake Mweru) and Lake Tanganyika are tributary to the Congo. The rest of the country lies within the Zambezi basin, the river itself rising in northwestern Zambia and circling through Angola before traversing the sandy plains of western Zambia. At the Victoria Falls it drops 300 feet into a milewide chasm at the head of the gorge leading down to Lake Kariba and the troughlike middle part of its valley. It has two main tributaries in Zambia. Rising on the Copperbelt, the Kafue River drains the Lukanga Swamp and Kafue Flats before an abrupt descent to the Zambezi. The Luangwa River, mostly confined within its rift trough, is quite different. The Bangweulu Swamps and the Kafue Flats are wetlands of international importance. The people Ethnic and linguistic composition Relative to the country's area, Zambia's population is small (although, with a growth rate of more than 3 percent per annum, increasing rapidly). It is highly urbanized, with well over half the population living in the four provinces along the Line of Rail. The movement of people from the rural areas into the towns was particularly marked after independence. Government efforts to reverse the flow have had only limited success. Most Zambians speak Bantu languages and are descended from farming and metal-using peoples who settled in the region over the past 2,000 years. Cultural traditions in the northeast and northwest indicate influences and migrations from the upper Congo basin. There are also some descendants of hunters and gatherers who seem to have been pushed back into the Kalahari, the Bangweulu and Lukanga swamps, and the Kafue Flats. In the 19th century invaders arrived from the south: Ngoni settled in the east, while the Kololo briefly ruled the Lozi in the upper Zambezi valley. Europeans began to enter in significant numbers in the late 19th century. Although most Zambians are of Bantu origin, the complex patterns of immigration have produced wide linguistic and cultural variety. Eighty different languages or dialects have been identified in Zambia; they can usefully be considered as comprising 14 groups, of which the Bemba group is the most widespread, accounting for more than one-third of the population. Second in importance is the Nyanja group (about 17 percent), while the Tonga group is about 15 percent. The non-African population tends to be located in the towns, although the commercial farming community, found mainly in the central and southern regions, includes Europeans and whites from South Africa, some holding Zambian citizenship. Many Europeans left at independence, and their numbers have steadily declined, partly owing to regulations that restrict the employment and residence of nonnationals. By contrast, the number of Asians has risen since independence. The majority are engaged in the retail trade, and they also are concentrated in the major towns, because in 1970 non-Zambians were prohibited from trading in rural areas. Most are Indians, mainly Gujarati speakers from western India. There is some relationship between the distribution of major tribal groups and the administrative division of the country into provinces. The Western (formerly Barotse) Province is dominated by the Lozi, who live on and about the floodplain of the upper Zambezi. Lozi society is markedly centralized under the leadership of a king, the litunga, and at one time nurtured separatist aspirations. In the North-Western Province, adjoining the Angolan and Congolese borders, there is no single dominant group; the peoples here include the southern Lunda and the Luvale, Chokwe, Luchazi, Mbunda, Ndembu, and Kaonde. The Southern Province contains the Ila-Tonga peoples, of which 12 separate groups can be identified, speaking closely related dialects. Settlement is characterized by dispersed homesteads, and there are no chiefs. Traditionally cattle-owning, they occupy an area of above-average soil fertility through which the railway was built, encouraging early involvement in commercial agriculture. Migration to urban areas is of lesser importance there than elsewhere. The Northern Province is dominated by the Bemba, who formed an extensive kingdom in the 19th century. The province was a major source of mine labour, and Bemba has become the lingua franca of the Copperbelt as well as the most widely spoken language in the country. Most languages in the northeast of the province are closely related to languages in Tanzania and Malawi. Luapula Province extends along the river of that name from Lake Bangweulu to Lake Mweru and is inhabited by a number of Bemba-speaking but culturally distinct peoples (among them the Lunda, Kabende, Aushi, and Chishinga). Fishing is the major economic activity. In the 19th century the valley was dominated by the Lunda kingdom of Kazembe. The Eastern Province is the home of the Nsenga, Chewa, Kunda, and Ngoni. The last invaded from the south during the 19th century but took the language of the peoples that they raided. The dominant language is Nyanja, which is also spoken in Malawi and is the lingua franca in Lusaka, to which many migrants from this area have moved. The ethnic boundary between the Ila-Tonga and the Lala-Lamba groups runs approximately through the Central Province, with the Lenje-Soli peoples occupying a buffer area between the two. The Lenje are related to the Ila-Tonga, and the Soli to the Lala-Lamba, who, in turn, are connected with the Kaonde of the North-Western Province. The Copperbelt (formerly the Western) Province is the location of the mining industry. The population is composed of people from all parts of Zambia, as well as some from neighbouring countries. This is true also of Lusaka Province, a small province created around the capital from the southern part of Central Province in 1976. There are seven official vernacular languages: Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lunda, and Kaonde, the latter three being languages of the North-Western Province. English is the official language of government. Religion Zambia is predominantly a Christian country, although few have totally abandoned all aspects of traditional belief systems. The first Christian missions arrived before colonial rule, and the growth of adherents was greatly assisted by the schools that they established. The Roman Catholic church is today the largest single denomination, but Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, and others are well established. The growth of fundamentalist churches has been particularly noticeable since independence, and the government of the newly independent country soon ran into conflict with two of these, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Lumpa church. The Asian community is predominantly Hindu, the rest mainly Muslim. There are relatively few Muslims in the African population.