Updated: African statesman Kenneth Kaunda passes on

Zambia’s founding president and liberation hero, Kenneth Kaunda, has died, aged 97, at a military hospital in the capital, Lusaka, where he was being treated for pneumonia.

Kaunda ruled Zambia from 1964, when the country won its independence from Britain, until 1991, and afterwards became one of the most committed activists against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

“I am sad to inform [members] we have lost Mzee [the old man]. Let’s pray for him,” Kaunda’s son Kambarage said on the late president’s Facebook page on Thursday.

Authorities declared 21 days of mourning for the liberation hero.

“On behalf of the entire nation and on my own behalf, I pray that the entire Kaunda family is comforted as we mourn our first president and true African icon,” President Edgar Lungu said in a message on his Facebook page.

The former president – affectionately known as KK – had been feeling unwell and had been admitted to the Maina Soko Medical Centre in Lusaka on Monday.

Although the South African nation’s copper-based economy fared badly under his long stewardship, Kaunda will be remembered more for his role as an anti-colonial fighter who stood up to white minority rule in Southern African countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

The youngest of eight children, Kaunda lost his father when he was eight years old. His mother was a teacher – a rare profession for Zambian women in those days, Aljazeera reported.