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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Hugh Macmillan

Simon Zukas obituary

Simon Zukas was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Zambia before independence in 1964
Simon Zukas was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Zambia before independence in 1964 Photograph: NONE

My friend Simon Zukas, who has died aged 96, first became prominent in the political life of Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) in 1951, as one of the founders and leaders of a radical, and predominantly African, committee that opposed the establishment of the settler-dominated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

In April 1952 the colonial government, holding that he was “a danger to peace and good order”, sought to deport him to the UK, a country with which he had no connection. He was held in prison in Livingstone for eight months and was then removed to London in December 1952. Appeals against his deportation, which went as far as the privy council, failed.

Born in Ukmergė, Lithuania, the son of Chaim and Libe Zukas, Simon had arrived in Northern Rhodesia with his family in July 1938, a few days before his 13th birthday. His father had left Lithuania in 1936 with no foreknowledge of the catastrophe that was soon to strike the Jewish population. Simon arrived in Ndola speaking only Yiddish and Lithuanian, but he was soon top of the class. Within five years he had won a scholarship to study civil engineering at the University of Cape Town.

He volunteered to do wartime military service and spent three years with African troops in East Africa. Taking up his university place in 1947, he became a radical socialist. He was close to, though not then a member of, the Communist party of South Africa.

In exile in London from 1953, he became a co-founder of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and was from 1960 a member of the London committee of the United National Independence party (UNIP). He met and in 1954 married Cynthia Robinson, a South African artist, and set up a successful civil engineering consultancy.

He was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Zambia before independence in 1964. For more than 20 years he devoted himself to civil engineering and commercial farming, but in 1990, disillusioned with the one-party state and Zambia’s economic decline, he became a founder of the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD). Following the defeat of President Kenneth Kaunda and UNIP in 1991, he joined the new government and served as minister of agriculture and then public works.

He resigned in 1996 over a matter of principle relating to the political rights of immigrants and their children, but returned to politics in 2001 as one of a group, the Oasis Forum, that successfully opposed Frederick Chiluba’s attempt to secure an unconstitutional third presidential term. He then became chair of a new opposition party, the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), stepping down in 2005.

He never, however, retired from political life. Ten days before his death, he led a deputation of elders to call upon the newly elected president, Hakainde Hichilema. Always committed to democracy, he welcomed Zambia’s third change of government through the ballot box.

His state funeral was marked by a day of national mourning.

He is survived by Cynthia, their sons, David and Alan, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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