Simon Ber Zukas

Simon Ber Zukas (31 July 1925 Ukmergė, Lithuania - 27 September 2021 Lusaka, Zambia) service number EB7073, East African Engineers, was the son of Chaim Wulf Zukas (1895-1974) and Libe Zukas born Davidowitz (1897-1984). He and his family went to Northern Rhodesia in July 1938 to join his father, who had earlier migrated to the industrial Copperbelt and established himself as a successful trader. Simon arrived in Ndola speaking only Yiddish and Lithuanian, but he was soon top of the class. Within five years he had won a scholarship to study civil engineering at the University of Cape Town. However, he decided to volunteer with the British Armed Forces. He spent three years with African troops in East Africa. In Northern Rhodesia, volunteers had to get permission from the Government through the Directorate of Manpower and his application was formally approved.

In February 1944 he was signed up into the East African Engineers and given the number EB7073. Within a week he was on his way to Kenya. This journey took two weeks and he had to cross 4 borders to reach Nairobi. He was sent to Nanyuki, to the East African Engineers Depot where he learnt some rudimentary military engineering and general army routine. After some months he did a 6 month recruits' course in Nakuru and was upgraded to the rank of Sergeant. His training involved physical fitness, being put through assault courses, live fire practice and mental indoctrination. He was then posted to the 4th Northern Rhodesia Regiment. He moved with it from Kenya to Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia where he did a PT instructor's course . He was then sent to join the 3rd Kings African Rifles stationed in Nanyuki, Kenya to await being shipped to Burma to join the campaign against the Japanese. In the interim, he did a course in military intelligence at Moshi, Tanganyika. He re-joined his battalion as a trained intelligence sergeant in mid-August 1945 where the soldiers were told that some immense bombs has been dropped on Japan and the Japanese were seeking peace. By then, Zukas had spent a year and a half in the Army and the war was now over. However, he was not demobilised. His regiment was assigned to travel to the Protectorate of Uganda to deal with riots following the murder of the Kaukiro (Prime Minister) of Buganda. He was sent to Jinja where he stayed for many months. By January 1946, the situation in the area was stabilized. He was then sent to the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, onwards to Mogadishu and to British Somaliland. It took a year to be released and in February 1947 he received his Class B release. He travelled back Lusaka and was demobbed.

He summed up his experience of the war "Looking back now, I can see that one result of my three years wandering about in British East Africa with both men from the UK and its colonies was that I had come to understand the nature of the British colonial system in East and Central Africa, its relationship with the white settler communities and the indigenous African populations.....I have formed the view that the African deserved a new dispensation. He had participated in a war, which was fought for human freedom and he deserved some dividends for his sacrifices. .... I was looking forward to playing my part in building a new order in Northern Rhodesia. Taking up his university place in 1947, he became a radical socialist. Upon graduation in December 1950, he returned to Zambia where he learnt of the colonial government's plans to federate the country with Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) and Malawi (Nyasaland). Arguing that this would serve the interests of the white settler minority, further disadvantaging the black majority and delaying the attainment of independence, Zukas put aside his professional and personal considerations to join the African Nationalist Congress, the main nationalist movement at the time. In April 1951 Zukas, alongside other young, militant nationalists formed the Anti-Federation Action Committee, of which he became secretary, and began rallying thousands of Zambians, especially those on the influential Copperbelt, to resist the proposed plans. Noting his growing influence in the nationalist movement, the colonial authorities ordered him to abandon his opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and, when he defied the directive, sent him to prison in April 1952. He remained in detention until December that year, when he was deported. In exile in London, he became a co-founder of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and was from 1960 a member of the London committee of the United National Independence party (UNIP). He married Cynthia Robinson in 1954, a South African artist, and set up a successful civil engineering consultancy. He was given a hero's welcome on his return to Zambia before independence in 1964. For more than 20 years he devoted himself to civil engineering and commercial farming. In 1990, disillusioned with the one-party state and Zambia's economic decline, he became a founder of the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD). Following the defeat of President Kenneth Kaunda and UNIP in 1991, he joined the new government and served as Minister of Agriculture and then Public Works. He resigned in 1996 over a matter of principle relating to the political rights of immigrants and their children, but returned to politics in 2001. He then became chair of a new opposition party, the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), stepping down in 2005. When he died, he was given a state funeral which was marked by a day of national mourning. He was survived by his wife Cynthia and his two sons.

Sources: 1. David Saks, South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg.

2. Zukas Simon. Into Exile and Back. Bookworld Publishers, Lusaka, 2002.

3. Simon Zukas obituary 31 Oct 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/31/simon-zukas-obituary

4. https://diggers.news/guest-diggers/2021/09/28/now-that-he-has-died-he-lives-forever-remembering-simon-zukas/

5. https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-1-268297841-4-763/simon-ber-zukas-in-myheritage-family-trees.