Zambia appoints first post-apartheid white president in sub-Saharan Africa

World Today

Zambian President Michael Sata, once dubbed “Mr. King Cobra” for his sharp-tongued remarks, died in a London hospital after a long illness, the Zambian government said Wednesday. Vice President Guy Scott, a white Zambian of Scottish descent, was appointed acting president of the southern African nation until elections are held within 90 days.

Scott is the first white leader of an sub-Saharan African nation since F.W. de Klerk, the last president of South Africa under apartheid, the white racist regime that ended in 1994.

Scott, a 70-year-old former agriculture minister, has said he has no presidential ambitions, and he cannot in any case become a fully empowered president because his parents were born outside Zambia, according to analysts.

Story compiled from Associated Press.