Zambia’s former Vice President Guy Scott, who briefly served as acting president in 2014 and became Africa’s first white head of state in two decades, has died at the age of 82, the government confirmed on Wednesday.
Scott died at his farm in Lusaka’s Leopards Hill area after an illness, according to a government statement. He served as vice president under President Michael Sata from 2011 to 2014, and was elevated to acting president following Sata’s death in office in October 2014, a role he held until January 2015 when Edgar Lungu was elected to the substantive presidency.
His brief tenure as head of state made him the first person of European descent to lead an African nation since South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk left office in the early 1990s. A Cambridge-educated economist born in Livingstone to Scottish and English immigrant parents, Scott was constitutionally barred from contesting the presidency in his own right, since Zambia’s constitution required presidential candidates to have both parents born in Zambia.
Scott’s political career spanned several decades and party affiliations. He first entered government as a planner in the Ministry of Finance shortly after Zambian independence, later founded an agribusiness venture, and moved through several political parties before joining the Patriotic Front in 2001, where he was elected MP for Lusaka Central in 2006 and went on to serve as the party’s vice-presidential running mate under Sata in 2011.
Tributes have poured in from Zambia’s political establishment. Former Vice President Nevers Mumba, who traveled to pay his respects, urged Zambians “to use this occasion for deep reflection and to refrain from polluting or tainting the memory of this great son of the soil with divisive political rhetoric,” describing Scott as having “served our nation with distinction, dedication and patriotism.”
Sources: The Zambian Observer — Dr Guy Scott has passed away · CNBC Africa — Zambia’s former Vice President Guy Scott dies at 82 · Reuters, via WHBL
