Zambia has long positioned itself as a continental leader in African nationalism and the anti-colonial struggle, yet 60 years after gaining full independence from British rule, dozens of Zambian citizens have spoken to the BBC about a persistent, underreported issue: subtle, systemic racism that continues to marginalize Black Zambians in daily life.
While the discrimination is rarely open or explicit, those who shared their experiences describe feeling like second-class citizens in their own homeland. Accounts range from qualified Black candidates being sidelined for professional roles to being snubbed at hospitality venues and overlooked by rental property landlords. Even amid these accounts, however, many Zambians expressed cautious optimism, noting that open conversations about racial inequity are slowly becoming more mainstream across the country. The Zambian government has rejected claims that racism is a problem within its borders.
Alexander Bwalya, a Black Zambian who requested a pseudonym to protect his privacy, told the BBC he finds it deeply jarring to experience anti-Black racism in a majority-Black African nation. He shared a firsthand account of discrimination at a wine bar in Lusaka, the country’s capital, where he and his friends were told specific high-end bottles of wine were out of stock. Moments later, the same bottles were offered to a white family that arrived after them, with waiters acting openly warm and accommodating to the new group.
When Bwalya and his friends complained to the venue’s manager, they were told to leave if they were unhappy with the service. The argument escalated, and Bwalya claims the white manager used a racial slur against one of his Black friends. Like many others who experience these incidents, Bwalya chose not to file a police report, saying he lacked confidence that authorities would take the claim seriously.
This conversation around race comes 60 years after Kenneth Kaunda, the iconic leader of Zambia’s independence movement, took office as the country’s first president in 1964. Before independence, colonial rule imposed harsh systemic racism: Black Zambians were forced to carry movement-restricting passes, schools and hospitals were legally segregated, and high-paying skilled mining jobs in Zambia’s copper-rich economy were exclusively reserved for white workers.
As president, one of Kaunda’s core policy goals was to empower the Black majority. His signature “Zambianisation” program replaced white executive leaders in key industries with Black Zambian professionals, and he was a vocal international supporter of movements fighting to end white minority rule across southern Africa. Kaunda’s founding vision for the nation was unambiguous: Black Africans would no longer be subjugated, and Zambia would be built on a foundation of equal respect for people of all races, colors, and creeds.
Yet a 2019 report from a United Nations human rights committee found that, like many other post-colonial societies, Zambia has failed to fully address the deep racial and class inequalities left by colonial rule. At the peak of colonial control, white residents made up less than 2% of Zambia’s population, and many left after independence. Today, no official population data tracks the current size of the white community, but all ethnic minorities combined, including Indians, Chinese and Arabs, make up roughly 9% of the total population.
No official public data tracks racial disparities in modern Zambia, but anecdotal reports and grassroots conversations about the issue have exploded across social media in recent years. In one high-profile case earlier this year, a local recruiter from Zambian employment firm Recruitment Matters posted a sales and marketing manager opening that explicitly stated, “THIS ROLE IS CURRENTLY NOT OPEN TO ZAMBIAN NATIONALS; WE ARE LOOKING FOR EXPATS OR FOREIGN RESIDENTS IN ZAMBIA.”
The post went viral across Zambian social media, sparking widespread public anger over its open discrimination. Omar Chanshi, a 37-year-old marketing professional based in Zambia, told the BBC that systemic exclusion from opportunities is a common experience for local workers. “There are contracts and systems and a lot of opportunities that we just don’t have access to as locals,” Chanshi said. “Forget trying to show whether you are the best or most qualified person, you just don’t have access.”
Following the public backlash, the recruiter apologized and deleted the post. The company later issued a formal statement acknowledging the public concern, saying the wording of the post failed to meet the company’s standards and did not reflect its recruitment approach. “Recruitment Matters operates a non-discriminatory, skills-based recruitment policy,” the firm told the BBC.
Victoria Phiri Chitungu, a historian and director of Livingstone Museum, argues that Kaunda’s zero-tolerance stance on overt discrimination simply pushed racism underground rather than eliminating it. “The obvious racist signs and acceptance of racism was no longer welcome and people were aware of that,” Chitungu explained. “But people started conforming to behave in ways that would not show racism. That doesn’t mean that it’s now absent.”
Chitungu and fellow Zambian historian Chanda Penda note that while Zambia faces its own challenges with racism, it is not an outlier on the continent. Both point to far more severe discrimination they have observed in post-apartheid South Africa, where stark racial inequality remains rampant 30 years after the end of formal segregation.
Malama Muleba, a Lusaka-based estate agent, told the BBC he does not see racism as a pervasive national crisis, but he confirms it is a widespread, open secret within the property rental sector. When landlords and property managers screen prospective tenants, Muleba says, white skin is still widely equated with financial stability. “If a person’s skin colour is white, people look at it, they see stability,” Muleba said. “They say: ‘OK, this person will be able to pay the rent or they will be able to not give me problems.’ Personally, it makes me feel a bit disappointed, but on the other side, it’s the reality.”
Most of Zambia’s small white population, which includes both foreign expats and Zambian citizens, is concentrated in major urban centers and tourist hubs including Lusaka, Livingstone and Mkushi. Many white residents in Lusaka work for large multinational corporations, a demographic detail that has reinforced a widespread link between race and perceived wealth. Multiple Zambians who spoke to the BBC highlighted this intersection of race and class, noting that service providers often assume non-Black customers are wealthier and receive better treatment as a result.
One common experience of discrimination came up repeatedly in the BBC’s interviews: preferential queue jumping for non-Black customers at public and private services. “When it comes to accessing certain services, you’ll find maybe there’s a queue and you’ve got some black Zambians, you’ve got some Indians and you’ve got a few white people there,” Muleba explained. “You’ll find in certain situations the white man will come first in getting attended to. The other Zambians will be looking among each other saying: ‘Look, we have been here long before this white man came here!’”
Many observers note that it is often Black employees who provide this preferential treatment to non-Black customers in retail banks, coffee shops and retail stores. Some Zambians argue that this dynamic is not always rooted in personal prejudice: one Black citizen told the BBC that preferential treatment often tracks perceived wealth and class as much as race, with wealthy Black drivers in nice cars or with Western accents receiving the same elevated service.
Zambia’s government has firmly denied that any form of racism exists in the country. Government spokesperson Cornelius Mweeta says anyone who claims racism is a problem is simply trying to sensationalize the issue for attention. “I’ll challenge any citizen out there to state that racism is a problem in Zambia. If there is somebody who has said that is a problem, I think perhaps they just wanted to sensationalise. Everyone is living harmoniously,” Mweeta said.
Historian Penda agrees that racism in Zambia is almost entirely subtle, not overt, and traces its roots to cultural dynamics that predate modern independence. He argues that the deference to white people was culturally embedded long before colonial rule ended, rooted in the ancient regional legend of Luchele, a mystical white-appointed figure said to help ancestral communities found their kingdoms. When European colonialists and missionaries arrived in the late 19th century, many Zambian communities who had never seen white people before identified the newcomers as Luchele and treated them with reverence normally reserved for divine figures.
“So from my perspective, it is not a big surprise that even up to now, we have this high esteem for white people – this racial imbalance has been passed down as from history,” Penda said.
Adrian Scarlett, a white British man who has lived in Zambia for three years and is married to a Black Zambian woman, says he still struggles to comprehend how racial inequality can persist in a majority-Black African nation. Scarlett, who lives in Livingstone, says there are still exclusive private venues where Black Zambians are effectively unwelcome, forming all-white social cliques that gather for evening and weekend events.
Scarlett originally built a large social media following under the alias Bye Bye Fatman documenting his weight loss journey, but today his content, which reaches more than 520,000 followers across Facebook and TikTok, focuses heavily on exposing and discussing racial inequality in Zambia. Some of his white friends have cut ties with him over his activism, but he says the response from Black Zambians has been overwhelmingly positive.
Scarlett argues that these open conversations are long overdue, a sentiment echoed by Bwalya, who says Zambia desperately needs honest public dialogue about race. Bwalya says he is glad more people are willing to talk about the issue openly now, and he hopes the growing conversation will eventually lead to a national reckoning that revives the egalitarian, anti-racist vision of Zambia’s founding father.