Kenneth Kaunda, who died in Lusaka this week at the age of 97, once said it was his wish for Zambians to have an egg on their table for breakfast every morning, a pint of milk, and a pair of shoes on their feet.
In the end the nation he led to independence would have conflicting emotions about the 27 years he spent at the helm, eventually booting him out by an overwhelming majority in 1991.
Kaunda is best known internationally as a prominent critic of white rule, in the then Rhodesia and South West Africa and in apartheid SA. He put his money where his mouth was, allowing freedom movements to operate from Zambia and providing a safe location for the ANC's headquarters in Lusaka.
He outlived many of his peers among the "frontline" group of regional leaders who had sponsored Southern Africa's guerrilla wars against white rule.
Former president Thabo Mbeki, who spent years in exile in Zambia, had a close relationship with him and hailed Kaunda as one of the architects of SA's democracy.
Zambia's support for liberation groups came at great cost. The Rhodesian military launched numerous air raids into neighbouring Zambia, killing hundreds of members of the groups fighting the Ian Smith regime. In 1986, South African warplanes also made forays over Zambia, killing refugees and guerrillas housed in refugee camps.
Rhodesia and SA cut economic ties with Zambia, intensifying the country's financial woes.
But Kaunda remained steadfast to the end.
Popularly known as KK, he was born at Lubwa near Chinsali in the then British-ruled Northern Rhodesia. His father, David, a priest who became a teacher, was forced to sit on a plain wooden bench in church while white ministers sat on cushions. His mother, Helen, was one of the first black teachers in the colony.
They had been married for 20 years, and had seven children already, and baby Kenneth was christened Buchizya, "the unexpected one".
Kaunda was educated at Munali school in Lusaka, the premier secondary school for black pupils in colonial Northern Rhodesia.
Before he got involved in politics, he was a teacher and headmaster. He married Betty Banda in 1946. Mama Betty, as she was known by the nation, died in 2012. They had three daughters and six sons.
As he became more involved in politics he often travelled around the country on his bicycle with his guitar strapped to his back, stopping to sing hymns and discuss politics with tribal chiefs and others.
On one memorable trip, in 1952, he encountered a lion. "I must have been about 20 yards from it when I stopped," he wrote in his book Zambia Shall Be Free.
"It continued to stare at me without making the slightest movement. I rang my bicycle bell and shouted, but it stood still and stared at me. I took my cycle pump and hit almost every part of my bicycle, but the animal did not even wink as far as I could see.
"I don't know why," he continued, "but all of a sudden I lifted my heavily laden bicycle as if to cross a stream without a bridge and waved it over my head with both my hands. This was too much for the king of beasts; he made one leap and disappeared."
Kaunda left the teaching profession in 1954 to lead a civil disobedience campaign, known as Cha-Cha-Cha, against British rule.
He publicly burnt his identity papers and declared that the British government could either "build more prisons or grant our legitimate rights".
He was a powerful orator whose adoring supporters would chant: "God in heaven - on earth, Kaunda."
He often quoted Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. At emotional moments he would tear up and compose himself by drying his eyes with the crisply laundered handkerchief he kept at the ready.
In 1955 Kaunda was jailed for possessing banned literature and while in prison vowed to give up smoking and drinking, a vow he was to keep all his life.
When the last elections of the colonial era were held in January 1964, Kaunda led his United National Independence Party to a landslide victory and in October that year, aged 40, he became president of the newly independent Zambia.
"In private he speaks so softly that listeners must often strain," a New York Times correspondent commented after an interview, adding that he was "gentle and self-effacing".
In the beginning "KK" made strides towards improving the lot of Zambians and the country had the highest per capita income in Africa in 1968.
But in 1973 Kaunda nationalised the nation's copper mines and at the same time the price of copper, which accounted for 90% of the country's exports, collapsed. Added to this was a steep rise in the price of oil and Zambia was forced to borrow so much from the International Monetary Fund that by 1987 it owed more than any other country south of the Sahara.
Kaunda was one of the founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor to the African Union.
In 1975 he and South African prime minister John Vorster held talks with Smith in an attempt to pressure him and the liberation movements fighting his government to begin negotiations and end the bloodshed in Rhodesia.
The negotiating table was in the middle of a railroad dining car that, at Smith's insistence, had been positioned at the midpoint of the Victoria Falls railroad bridge on the border between Zambia and Rhodesia, high above the Zambezi River.
Smith and Vorster remained on the Rhodesian side of the river while Kaunda and the liberation group leaders remained in Zambia. The meeting did little to achieve its aims.
In 1987, addressing a nation in which an estimated 20% of the population was infected with HIV, Kaunda disclosed on television that his fifth son, Masuzgo Gwebe, had died of Aids.
Kaunda saw himself as an advocate of the rule of law and democratic principles. But as opposition to his rule grew, he crushed dissent and introduced a one-party state in 1973, saying that national unity was best achieved through one-party rule. Kaunda was the only candidate in elections in 1978, 1983 and 1987 - scoring more than 80% of the vote each time.
In 1991, mass demonstrations, food riots, a disastrous economy and international pressure forced him to agree to multiparty elections. He suffered a crushing defeat. The opposition won 81% of the vote.
Kaunda accepted the result, becoming only the second leader in Sub-Saharan Africa, after Mathieu Kérékou of Benin, to allow a multiparty vote and leave power peacefully.
Kaunda's successor, Frederick Chiluba, stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the state and tried to use the fact that Kaunda had Malawian ancestry to claim he was not really Zambian and should be deported. Chiluba's attempt to force Kaunda out the country failed.
Kaunda retired to a modest house in Lusaka, where he would often personally make tea and play his guitar for visitors.
In 1999 Kaunda suffered another personal tragedy. In November of that year, four gunmen shot and killed his 47-year-old son, Wezi, in the driveway of his home in Lusaka. Wezi was a retired army major and rising political figure. The authorities described the crime as a carjacking, but many suspected it was a deliberate assassination.
After leaving politics Kaunda occasionally made the news. An avid ballroom dancer - prime minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain had been one partner - he even made a surprise appearance in the studio audience of the US television show Dancing With the Stars in 2006.
Kaunda also remained a voice in public affairs.
"I have a duty to come and point out things," he told a journalist in 2002. "I have been pointing them out to great crowds, sometimes to wild cheers, sometimes to deafening silence. I'm not sure I have brought joy to many a heart in authority. But it's out of love of my country that I'm saying these things, to set things right."
One of his last major public appearances was at the funeral of Nelson Mandela in December 2013.
Sources: The New York Times, Bloomberg, BBC, Economist, SABC, The Guardian
KEY PLAYER ON SA'S ROAD TO DEMOCRACY
Kaunda was known internationally as a critic of white rule in SA and what were then Rhodesia and South West Africa.
This week former president Thabo Mbeki, who spent years in exile in Zambia, related anecdotes of that time in an interview on SABC in which Kaunda's support for the anti-apartheid struggle shone through.
"At some point, one member of the ANC got involved with drug dealers. And they warned us, the police in Zambia, they said, 'We are going to arrest the Zambian . and we are going to have to arrest this member of the ANC working with them. Take this member of yours out of Zambia so that by the time we look for him, we won't find him. Because we must avoid embarrassing the ANC in any way,' " said Mbeki.
In another incident, a mercenary from New Zealand was sent to assassinate Mbeki but was arrested before he could plant the car bomb. He was detained for months, and on his release, Kaunda made an example of him.
"President Kaunda called a press conference, produced this fellow and said, 'Here is this young boy from New Zealand. He came to Zambia to do this terrible thing . but New Zealand is with us in the struggle against apartheid. and this young man came here to embarrass the people of New Zealand.' "
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