There is much about the Central African republic of Zambia to make it indistinguishable to the casual Western observer among the multitude of black independent fragments into which the monolith of colonial Africa was blown by the wind of change. Its borders are all too familiarly arbitrary and just as paradoxically treasured; its population, though of one ethnic group, is divided in loyalty by strong tribal and regional affinities which nurture the ghosts of ancient feuds never entirely laid by the 60-year interregnum of alien rule; its economy is dependent upon primary product export and thus at the mercy of markets well beyond its control; the frailities of the new princes of the political kingdom have become all too clear in the eight years since the last unlamented duty at the midnight stroke in the independence stadium; and the expectations so feverishly aroused in the popular breast in the euphoric march to freedom remain, for many, as distant a prospect as ever.