WEZI Kaunda, son of Zambia's founding president and current key opposition leader, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, died yesterday after being shot in what his father's security chief and a party official said was an assassination.
Police sources, however, said they thought the incident was a car-hijacking. They said Wezi Kaunda and his wife were driving in a luxury car on Wednesday night when they were stopped by suspected hijackers who opened fire.
Mr Kaunda, a former army major, was shot in the stomach, back and shoulder, doctors said. His wife was unharmed.
The head of security for Dr Kaunda, Mr Moyce Kaulung'ombe, said the motive for the shooting was political.
"Major Wezi was trailed by the people who killed him. They knew what they were looking for. He was murdered for political reasons. This is clearly an assassination," he said.
A police spokesman, Mr Richard Mwanza, said one suspect had been arrested. Three others were still on the run. Wezi Kaunda, who was in his late 40s, was a chief aide to his father, who is the main rival to President Frederick Chiluba, He was Dr Kaunda's third son and the most politically active.
A spokesman at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka said Wezi Kaunda was able to talk for a while after being admitted at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday night.
Mr Basil Kabwe, administrative secretary of Dr Kaunda's United National Independence Party, said: "It is well known that Wezi was a thorn in the flesh of this government, and his death must be put at their doorstep.
"The rabid hatred for Kenneth Kaunda and his son has tragically ended in the ghastly death of Wezi," he said.
Dr Kaunda was out of the country at the time of the shooting, but sources said he was heading back to Lusaka. Relations are tense between the former president and Mr Chiluba, who ousted him in multi-party elections in 1991 after he had ruled Zambia since independence in 1964.
Dr Kaunda and another opposition leader, Mr Rodger Chongwe, claimed they were shot and wounded by police at an opposition rally in central Zambia in August 1997 in what they insisted was an assassination attempt.
The former South African president, Mr Nelson Mandela, said he was saddened to hear of the death of Wezi Kaunda, whose father had been a longtime ally of the ANC.