Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and liberation hero, has died aged 97 at a military hospital in Lusaka where he was being treated for pneumonia, his son Kambarage said on Wednesday. Kaunda ruled Zambia from 1964, when the southern African nation won its independence from Britain, until 1991, and afterwards become one of Africa’s most committed activists against HIV/AIDS. “I am sad to inform (members) we have lost Mzee. Let’s pray for him,” Kambarage said on the late president’s Facebook page. The former president had been feeling unwell and had been admitted to the Maina Soko Medical Centre in Lusaka earlier this week.

Although Zambia’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-ruled South Africa. Kaunda was the youngest of eight children born to an ordained Church of Scotland missionary and teacher, an immigrant from Malawi. He played a seminal role in Zambia’s fight for liberation through his Zambian African National Congress (ZANC) and United National Independence Party (UNIP). Kenneth Kaunda also played a key role in assisting the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa’s freedom struggle, giving the party and its leaders refuge in Lusaka.

Kenneth Kaunda advocated ’Zambian Humanism’ - a concept based on a combination of ideas of state control and basic African values of mutual aid, trust and loyalty to the community. Kaunda was stripped of Zambian citizenship in 1999, a decision that was overturned the following year. He was married to Betty Kaunda, who passed away in 2012 and had eight children.