President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, facing popular resistance to the austere effects of a World Bank restructuring programme, yesterday survived an attempted military coup. One dissident soldier was killed by troops loyal to the president.
"I am happy to announce that the plans of our enemies have been thwarted," Mr Chiluba said about five hours after sporadic gunfire erupted at dawn near his State House residence. Witnesses reported seeing soldiers in trenches outside the State House.
A senior aide said the coup plotters, from the previously unknown National Redemption Council, had been arrested after they were found hiding at the Zambian Broadcasting Corporation. Mr Everisto Mutale, one of Mr Chiluba's most senior advisers, said the government's forces were firmly in control.
Mr Chiluba, who ended Mr Kenneth Kaunda's 27-year rule in Zambia's first fully democratic elections in 1991, said in a national radio broadcast yesterday: "My government was legitimately and democratically elected. The programme and the plans that we set out to carry out will continue." The government has come under popular pressure as a result of mounting unemployment which many blame on the World Bank's conditions for investment. In addition, donor countries cut back on aid payments last year after Mr Chiluba changed the constitution to eliminate Mr Kaunda from the presidential election race on the grounds that his parents were not born in Zambia.
A man calling himself Capt Solo, later identified as Capt Steven Lungu, announced the coup in a dawn radio broadcast, saying: "This morning we have toppled the MMD [Movement for Multi-party Democracy] government of Chiluba because of its criminal means and corrupt means. The country was going to ruin, it was collapsing completely and there is only one organised institution that can put an end to such criminal activity and that's the military." In his radio broadcast hours after putting down the coup, Mr Chiluba urged foreign investors to bolster his country's struggling economy. "We are a stable country and you will reap the rewards of our stability," he said.
The US envoy, Mr Bill Richardson, who is on a six-nation tour of Africa, condemned the coup attempt. South Africa also condemned it, calling it an "unconstitutional and unacceptable" action against a democratic government.
Western diplomats said the atmosphere was calm yesterday afternoon, but few shops were open and traffic remained light on the capital's streets.
Mr Kaunda and Mr Chiluba have both faced several attempted coups, but the country's small defence force has never succeeded in toppling a government. Mr Kaunda, who has mounted a strong campaign for re-election, was lightly wounded in a shooting in August which he blamed on the security forces. The former president, who is on a private visit to South Africa, said in a statement that neither a military coup nor violence would solve Zambia's political problems.