Kenneth Kaunda

Zambia's founding president ran a one-party state for nearly two decades before strikes, food riots and an attempted coup pushed him to legalise opposition parties in 1990. In the October 1991 election he lost heavily to the trade unionist Frederick Chiluba and conceded the same day, with international observers including Jimmy Carter present. That concession made Zambia an early model for multi-party change, and Kaunda's own later treatment by his successor showed how fragile it still was.