September 6, 1995
LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) _ Government officials on Wednesday gave reporters a tour of two huge underground bunkers built in the 1970s as a secret command center for Zambia’s then-socialist government.
President Frederick Chiluba, winner of elections in 1991 that ended 27 years of authoritarian rule by President Kenneth Kaunda, claims the bunkers were used to imprison and torture Kaunda’s opponents.
Reporters taken on the tour saw an elaborate network of tunnels and chambers, equipped with luxury living quarters and a cache of weapons, but no evidence of torture.
Kaunda, who is trying to return to power in elections next year, and other opposition groups have accused Chiluba of compromising national security by opening the bunkers.
They say the government’s revelations are intended to portray Kaunda as a brutal, paranoid and power-crazed leader who squandered his impoverished nation’s resources on whims.
The bunkers were constructed between 1974 and 1976 by engineers sent by Yugoslav leader Josef Broz Tito.
A built-in wardrobe, yielding to a gentle tap, folded away to reveal a darkened tunnel leading into a bomb-proofed labyrinth equipped with living quarters, a broadcasting station, meeting rooms and a cache of weapons.
One bunker lies five levels by elevator beneath the presidential palace. The other is a seven-level basement tucked under a hill four miles away in eastern Lusaka.
Former security officials loyal to Kaunda have said the facilities were built at a time when he gave refuge to guerrillas fighting to overthrow the white governments of Namibia, South Africa and the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
Rhodesian commandos attacked guerrilla camps and safe houses in Zambia and Zimbabwean Vice President Joshua Nkomo, then head of a guerrilla army, used one of the bunkers after an assassination attempt in 1978. – apnews