Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula

This book transforms our understanding of the recent political history of Central Africa. It charts the complex life and thought of Harry Nkumbula (ca. 1917-1983), the first openly nationalist African politician in Northern Rhodesia and, later, the leader of parliamentary opposition during Zambia's multi-party First Republic.

Based mainly on his personal papers and the newly opened archives of UNIP, Zambia's ruling party between 1964 and 1991, the volume looks at how Nkumbula imagined a Zambian nation for the first time and, later, presented a liberal alternative to dominant state-led models of political and economic development.

By exploring the trajectory of Nkumbula's ANC, a minority liberal party with strong ethnic roots, the book throws new light on the under-acknowledged fractiousness of Zambian nationalism and warns against reading African post-colonial politics solely in terms of clientelism.