Recently, an author’s manuscript of an important book was unearthed in the archives files at The Wesleyan Church World Headquarters in Fishers, Ind.
Zambia Shall Be Free (1962) is the autobiography of Zambia President Kenneth Kaunda’s life as well as the story of the independence movement in Zambia, which was remarkable for its non-violence. Kaunda was Zambia’s first president, from 1964 until 1991. The book had great political significance at the time and has historical significance today.
How the manuscript arrived in the Wesleyan Archives took on the nature of an unraveling mystery.
Dr. Dwight Thomas, faculty member at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Penn., visited Archives to do research for Missionaries on the Fringe, a book that he was writing. His primary interest was Pilgrim Holiness Church (PHC) missionary collaboration with the Brethren in Christ (BIC) in Zambia in the early to mid-twentieth century. (The PHC, through merger, became part of The Wesleyan Church today.) Prior to his visit to the archives, Dr. Thomas interviewed retired missionary Daniel Bursch who once served as the PHC national director in Zambia.
Dr. Thomas examined three boxes of materials in the archives that Rev. Bursch had forwarded there in 1977. The boxes had been sent to Bursch by M. M. Temple, a British missionary who had served for a time as headmaster of the David Livingston Teacher Training School in Livingston, Zambia, a school that was part of the PHC ministry in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
The files had been previously examined, but tucked behind the files in a previously unnoticed box was the typed manuscript of several hundred pages in two volumes.
Both Bursch and Temple were personally acquainted with President Kaunda, and it appears that Temple may have been asked to edit the manuscript.
We are making inquiries through Alfred Kalembo, current National Superintendent of the Pilgrim Wesleyan Church in Zambia, to reunite the manuscript with President Kaunda or with the people of Zambia.
Pictured: Alfred and Muumbe Kalembo hold the treasured manuscript.
Pictured, left to right: Greg Teegarden (director of archives), Kerry Kind (director of communications), Alfred Kalembo (National Superintendent of the Pilgrim Wesleyan Church in Zambia), and Kalembo’s wife Muumbe.
