Lusaka
Lusaka is the capital and largest city of Zambia. It is one of the fastest-developing cities in southern Africa. Lusaka is in the southern part of the central plateau at an elevation of about., the city's population was about 3.3 million, while the urban population is estimated at 2.5 million in 2018. Lusaka is the centre of both commerce and government in Zambia and connects to the country's four main highways heading north, south, east, and west. English is the official language of the city administration, while Bemba, Tonga and Nyanja are the commonly spoken street languages.
The earliest evidence of settlement in the area dates to the 6th century AD, with the first known settlement in the 11th century. It was then home to the Lenje and Soli peoples from the 17th or 18th century. The founding of the modern city occurred in 1905 when it lay in the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, which was controlled by the British South African Company. The BSAC built a railway linking their mines in the Copperbelt to Cape Town and Lusaka was designated as a water stop on that line, named after a local Lenje chief called Lusaaka. White Afrikaner farmers then settled in the area and expanded Lusaka into a regional trading centre, taking over its administration. In 1929, five years after taking over control of Northern Rhodesia from the BSAC, the British colonial administration decided to move its capital from Livingstone to a more central location, and Lusaka was chosen. Town planners including Stanley Adshead worked on the project, and the city was built out over the subsequent decades.
Lusaka lost some of its status to Salisbury when the latter became the capital of the merged Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953, but regained it when it was named the capital of newly independent Zambia in 1964. A large-scale building programme in the city followed, including government buildings, the University of Zambia and a new airport. Wealthy suburbs in Lusaka include Woodlands, Ibex Hill and Rhodes Park. Large-scale migration of people from other areas of Zambia occurred both before and after independence, and a lack of sufficient formal housing led to the emergence of numerous unplanned shanty towns on the city's western and southern fringes.
History
Early history
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. 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, 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, 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 from Kalomo through to the mining town of Broken Hill. 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, in length and wide.
After World War I, the United Kingdom took control of Tanganyika, 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
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 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. 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.