Zambia President Michael Sata Dies At 77 In London

After reportedly concealing a long illness, Zambian president Michael Sata, 77, died Tuesday in a London hospital, the country’s second leader to die in office in a foreign hospital. Six years ago, former president Levy Mwanawasa died in office in a Paris hospital, after suffering several strokes.
Sata’s death in the King Edward VII Hospital late Tuesday was confirmed by Zambia’s cabinet secretary, Roland Msiska. “It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing on of our beloved president,” he said Wednesday, after media reports that said Sata was dead. Zambia’s cabinet met Wednesday morning to apparently discuss issues surrounding the succession. Sata had been largely out of view since May. He has recently missed several important public engagements: a scheduled address to the United Nations last month and Zambia’s 50 year anniversary of independence last week.
But his deputy, Guy Scott, insisted last month the president was in perfect health, after the speech cancellation. Sata won power in the copper-producing nation in 2011, when his Patriotic Front defeated the governing Movement for Multiparty Democracy that had been in power for two decades. In one of the continent’s relatively rare peaceful and uncontested elections of an opposition presidential candidate, Sata was swept into office after campaigning heavily against Chinese abuses in the country’s copper mines.
He was last seen in public last month at the opening of Zambia’s parliament, where he struggled to finish his prepared speech and abandoned it halfway through. He reportedly joked, “I am not dead.” Sata appointed the defense minister, Edgar Lungu, acting president before his departure and Lungu filled his shoes during the Independence Day celebrations.
In recent weeks, a group of non-government organizations called on Sata to take leave because “something is not right.” They called on the government to come clean about Sata’s health. In August a group of lawyers, the Coalition for the Defense of Democratic Rights warned that if Sata was incapable of opening parliament this “will signify the end of the Sata presidency.”
The group said Zambians were “entitled to a president who is capable of fulfilling the duties of office according to law.” The group argued that if Sata appointed an acting president other than his vice president, Guy Scott, the government would be obliged to call a presidential by-election within 90 days. In the past, Scottish-born Scott has often stood in for Sata when he has been absent from his duties. He appears ineligible to succeed Sata because of a constitutional clause that a president’s parents must be Zambian.