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To diminish Zambia's dependence on the white-ruled neighbors, Kaunda wants to form an East African federation with Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. He has obtained agreement in principle for a 1,268-mile railroad linking Lusaka with Dar es Salaam-but the line may not be completed until 1970 or later. After being proclaimed the new nation's President-elect, Kaunda told the crowd of his vision of a free and peaceful Zambia "where people of all tribes, races, beliefs and opinions, political and otherwise, will be able to live happily and in harmony."
During the independence festivities only one noted Zambian failed to share in all the harmony. He is Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a grade-school science teacher and the director of Zambia's National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, who claimed the goings-on interfered with his space program to beat the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the moon. Already Nkoloso is training twelve Zambian astronauts, including a curvaceous 16-year-old girl, by spinning them around a tree in an oil drum and teaching them to walk on their hands, "the only way humans can walk on the moon."
*Southern Rhodesia will now be called just plain Rhodesia.