[edit]
See also: Timeline of Lusaka
Government House, built for the Governor of Northern Rhodesia
Early history[edit]
The earliest evidence of settlement in the area around what is now the Lusaka area dates to the 6th century. The first known village dates to around the 11th century, a settlement of round huts close to the modern suburb of Olympia. The subsequent centuries saw considerable fluctuation of people in the area, until the arrival of the Lenje and Soli peoples in the 17th or 18th century. The Soli are believed by scholars to have arrived as part of the Luba migration along the Luapula River, while the Lenje are related to the Ila–Tonga. Modern Lusaka lies on the boundary of the territories of the two groups, with the Lenje inhabiting the region to the north of the city and the Soli to the south. In the 19th century, African and European slave traders began arriving from the coastal regions of modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola, enslaving members of the Soli and Lenje communities for shipment to the Middle East, Europe and South America. The need to evade these attacks as well as their use of a shifting-cultivation farming system, necessitated frequent relocation amongst the Soli and Lenje, and there were, therefore, no major permanent settlements.
In the late 19th century, British–South African mining entrepreneur and politician Cecil Rhodes founded the British South African Company (BSAC), with a charter from Queen Victoria to colonise and develop land in sections of what is now northern South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana. Rhodes was a strong believer in the Cape to Cairo railway project, although with German East Africa blocking the route to the north of BSAC territory, he could not progress it during his lifetime. With little regard for the prior rights of the African populations, Rhodes directed the expansion of territorial control as far as Salisbury (now Harare in Zimbabwe), and his company continued extending to the north even after his death in 1902. The BSAC took formal control of the region around Lusaka through the protectorate of Barotziland–North-Western Rhodesia, named after Rhodes, in 1899. The capital was initially at Kalomo, being switched to Livingstone in 1907. This was merged in 1911 with the territory of North-Eastern Rhodesia to form Northern Rhodesia, predecessor of modern Zambia.
Faced with uprisings by Africans within their territory, as well as an economic decline and a desire to expand mining interests in northern Zambia's Copperbelt, the BSAC expedited the building of the northbound railway from South Africa into Northern Rhodesia from 1896. Lusaka was founded in 1905 as a water stop on the route and was named after a Chief Lusaaka, the leader of a nearby Lenje village. The section of line through Lusaka was built by the Mashonaland Railway Company, extending the line by 452 kilometres (281 mi) from Kalomo through to the mining town of Broken Hill (now Kabwe). During the subsequent years, white Afrikaner farmers settled in the area, Lusaka becoming their regional centre and access point to the railway. By 1913, several stores and a hotel had opened, and they persuaded the BSAC to declare Lusaka as a recognised town and cede control of local affairs to them. This early town was governed by the Lusaka Village Management Board, elected by the farmers, and consisted of a tract of land along the railway route, 5 kilometres (3 mi) in length and 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) wide.
After World War I, the United Kingdom took control of Tanganyika (now Tanzania), which had been previously part of German East Africa. This created an almost continuous line of British colonies from South Africa through to Egypt and led to the revival of projects for the Cape to Cairo railway and a similar road route. The British imperial government took direct control of Northern Rhodesia in 1924, through a governor and legislative council, but the BSAC retained its rights over mining acquired in prior decades. The new administration favoured an indirect rule system with self-governance for the African population, although in reality the rights of Africans remained very limited. The mining corporations, as well as Afrikaner farmers around Lusaka, did not welcome the change, favouring a South African model. The colonial administration favoured the establishment of planned towns as a means of asserting its authority.
Designation as Northern Rhodesia's capital[edit]
In March 1929, the UK's Colonial Office sent a telegram to the Northern Rhodesian government recommending that the capital of the territory be moved, citing "communications" and also "health" reasons. However, the medical rationale for the relocation was not explicitly published at the time. James Maxwell, a former physician and the protectorate's governor since 1927, brought his former colleague David Alexander from Nigeria to assist him with this relocation project. Keen to avoid the informal development of the townships that were emerging close to mining areas, Alexander recommended that a town planner be recruited to design the capital. Maxwell and Alexander then investigated possible sites for the new city, eventually choosing Lusaka as a result of its situation on the railway and at the crossroads of Northern Rhodesia's Great North Road and Great East Road. Maxwell requested a town planner from the Colonial Office, which sent University College London professor Stanley Adshead, as well as a water engineer, to the colony. Adshead examined several possible locations for the capital, eventually confirming Lusaka as a suitable location in late 1930. He had considered placing the capital in the Copperbelt, but a mutual distrust between the mining corporations and the government meant that both preferred to maintain some distance between the capital and the mines. The water engineer's investigations concluded that there was sufficient groundwater, and the report confirming Lusaka as the planned capital was approved by the legislative council in July 1931.
Ronald Storrs replaced Maxwell as governor in 1932, but funds were limited as a result of the Great Depression and there was little progress on the development of Lusaka. Several thousand Africans migrated to the city in search of construction work, but none was available, leading to large-scale poverty, hunger, and rioting. Storrs's greatest interest in the project was the development of the Government House, echoing a similar project he had initiated as governor of Cyprus, when his headquarters was burned down in a revolt. Seeking to emulate the Cyprus building, as well as the recently completed viceroy's mansion in New Delhi, Storrs commissioned several top architects to work on the plan, which was presented at the Royal Academy. The £43,000 projected cost of the building was more than 10 per cent of the total budget earmarked for the Lusaka project and the Colonial Office insisted in late 1933 that it be reduced. Storrs left his post as governor shortly afterwards, on the grounds of ill health. By that point, the completed work consisted of a few short stretches of road (including Cairo Road, named for its anticipated place on the proposed Cape to Cairo Road) and some houses and flats for government officials.
Storrs's replacement as governor was Hubert Winthrop Young, who had been serving as governor of neighbouring Nyasaland (now Malawi). Early in his tenure, in April 1934, Young hosted a visit to Lusaka by Prince George, the fourth son of King George V. During his visit, George laid the foundation stone of Lusaka's administrative buildings, as well as opening roads named after his father and himself. After the royal visit, Young wrote to the Colonial Office that he was "optimistic about the future of Lusaka", and he appointed administrator Eric Dutton to lead the project. There was some resistance from the white population of Livingstone, which feared that the capital would lead to a loss of business. Young refused their demand to compensate them financially, but he sought to placate them by establishing Livingstone as the protectorate's tourism capital, with a new museum and a game reserve. Lusaka formally became the capital in May 1935, with a "Lusaka week" celebration scheduled to coincide with celebrations of George V's silver jubilee. The government commissioned a special train, which moved all government officials from Livingstone to Lusaka during a single weekend.
Under Adshead's original plans, Lusaka was proposed as a pure administrative centre, with no industry or large African population; he commented at one point that it "could never become an important city". Under Bowling's revised plans, there were areas designated for both light and heavy industry, as well as a business area. He gave prominence to the airport, as well as to the government house, albeit under a simpler design than that envisaged by Storrs. Both men had built racial segregation into their plans, dividing the city into "native" and "non-native" areas, with residential areas and services for Africans placed on the southern periphery of the city. Despite producing these plans, both Adshead and Bowling had left Rhodesia before the Lusaka week, and the remainder of the building was left to Dutton and a small team of white officials. The city's footprint covered a large area, even at this early stage, despite much of it being undeveloped. This was part of a policy devised by Adshead intended to allow internal expansion, rather than the usual central core with suburbs added outside.
Later colonial years[edit]
The building of Lusaka continued through the second half of the 1930s, but progress was slowed by a shortage of funds. The Northern Rhodesia government had hoped to raise money through taxes on the mining companies, but these were mostly registered in the United Kingdom and paid all the tax on their revenues there. The loan taken to cover the project's £400,000 budget was guaranteed by the Beit Trust, but there was no scope for additional infrastructure to be built. The UK launched an investigation into a possible merger of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1938, a prospect which caused private businesses to withdraw investment, fearing that Lusaka would lose its capital status. This left the government as the sole source of funds. Also in 1938, the Northern Rhodesia government commissioned a report by finance expert Alan Pim, to examine the territory's economy. This concluded that despite the relatively high taxes on mining in the territory, the administration (which was already heavily reliant on revenue from mining) was not getting its fair share. Pim also criticised the allocation of housing for Africans in Lusaka, noting that of 10,000 living in the city at that time, only 1,500 were in formal housing. Africans were at that time only permitted to live in the city under temporary work permits, with family members required to remain elsewhere.
The need for metals during World War II led to a boom in the copper industry which, accompanied by a 1941 excess-profits tax ordered by the UK, brought increased revenue to the government. The boom also led to a substantial increase in urbanisation. Lusaka's official population (which excluded much of the African population) rose from around 2,000 in 1931 to almost 19,000 in 1946, with a 15 per cent annual growth rate. In 1948, the government passed the African Housing Ordinance, which authorised permanent residential suburbs for Africans, including married couples. Employers in the city were also required to pay for their workers' housing. The city authorities founded the African Housing Board, which built the new suburbs of New Chilenje and Matero. Lusaka's African workforce, which remained relatively unskilled, did not benefit as much as that of the Copperbelt, where a shortage of skilled mining labour had led to improved pay. In 1952, a development plan for Lusaka gained statutory approval for the first time – earlier proposals such as those by Adshead and Bowling had never been legally sanctioned. This plan envisaged much more territory for the African suburbs, but only around one-third of these were ever built.
In 1953, the British government approved the pre-war plan to merge Northern Rhodesia with its two neighbours, forming the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Authorities in London cited the economic benefits and the belief that the merged territory would form a "multiracial state" to counter the rise of Apartheid in South Africa. The federation was popular with white settlers across the region, especially in Southern Rhodesia, but was strongly opposed by the African population. Lusaka remained the capital of Northern Rhodesia but many of the government departments, as well as some private sector industries, moved to Salisbury, which was designated as the federal capital. Lusaka's economy suffered as a result, with reduced jobs in construction, transportation, and domestic service. This economic decline, coupled with a fall in copper prices in the mid-to-late 1950s, resulted in large-scale unemployment among both African and white Lusakans. The population continued to grow, however, as increasing numbers moved from rural areas to the city's informal settlements. In contrast to South Africa, where the government regularly bulldozed them, the authorities in Rhodesia tolerated these squatter areas although they provided no services and Africans continued to live under strict legal constraints.
Capital of the Republic of Zambia[edit]
As discontent with federation rose, a new group of African leaders emerged in the late 1950s, seeking majority rule and independence for Northern Rhodesia, as had recently been attained in Ghana. After a civil disobedience in 1962, led by Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP), the UK Government agreed to a new constitution under which Africans took control of the legislature. The end of the federation followed in 1963, and in 1964, Northern Rhodesia became independent as the Republic of Zambia. Lusaka was named as the capital of Zambia. A large-scale building programme in the city followed, including: government buildings, the University of Zambia and a new airport. The employment opportunities that arose from this attracted further migration from rural areas into Lusaka, exacerbating the city's housing shortage. The government constructed several new housing estates during the 1960s, including New Kamwala and Chilenje South. This was the first time that good-quality housing with public utilities had been built for the African population, although it was largely limited to civil servants and copper-industry workers, with the majority of residents continuing to live in the informal settlements.
Although Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania had achieved independence by the mid-1960s, the other nearby territories of Mozambique, Angola, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa were still under white minority control. Many activists from these territories moved to post-independence Lusaka, and American historian Evan Wade later described it as the "center of anti-colonial resistance for Southern Africa". In 1969, the city hosted the Fifth Summit Conference of East and Central African States, attended by fourteen leaders of African countries. The conference produced the Lusaka Manifesto, a pledge of solidarity by the signatories in seeking majority rule in southern Africa. The manifesto advocated a strategy of negotiation rather than violence and was later endorsed by the United Nations. The 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia and subsequent UN embargo and eventual border closure impacted Zambia's economy, depriving it of its principal trade route.
In the early days of independence, with high revenues from copper exports, economists described Zambia as a "middle-income country" with the potential to become fully developed. Beginning in the 1970s, however, the Zambian economy suffered a major decline as a result of falling copper prices and rising oil prices. Per capita income dropped by 50% between 1974 and 1994. The slow-down also highlighted what American political scientist John Harbeson described as a "massive and inefficient parastatal sector as well as the government's prevailing urban bias", and led to a fall in formal employment in Lusaka which continued for several decades. The lack of jobs decreased the level of rural-to-urban migration in Zambia, but the decline of the copper industry caused a large movement of people from the Copperbelt cities to Lusaka. This, and the natural population growth in the city's young population, gave Lusaka a population growth of around 4% in the 1990s, exceeding the national average.
The Zambian economy grew rapidly during the 2000s, and the government initiated projects designed to improve the quality of housing and access to services in Lusaka. These included a comprehensive urban development plan, prepared by the Zambian government and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and an urban and regional planning bill, which was enacted in 2015. Inequality and underinvestment in housing remain high, however, with 70% of residents still living in unplanned settlements in 2015. In 2018, the city council began a programme of road improvements to tackle chronic traffic congestion, but the lack of quality housing and services remains an issue as of 2021.
