Zambia’s Guy Scott became Africa’s first white head of state in 20 years today (Wednesday, October 29) after former president, Michael Sata (“King Cobra”), died in a London hospital, he was aged 77.
Scott, a Cambridge-schooled economist born in Zambia to Scottish parents, had been Sata’s vice president. He will be interim leader until an election in three months. He becomes the first white African leader since South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk lost to Nelson Mandela in the 1994 election that ended apartheid.
Scott (70) is, however, ineligible to run in a presidential election as his parents were not born in Zambia.