Zambia's former Vice President Guy Scott, who in 2014 became Africa's first white head of state in two decades when he briefly served as acting president, has died at the age of 82, the government said on Wednesday.
Zambia's Vice President Guy Scott at the first Leaders' Session of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, at the State Department in Washington, in this August 6, 2014 file picture. Reuters/Larry Downing
Zambia's former Vice President Guy Scott, who in 2014 became Africa's first white head of state in two decades when he briefly served as acting president, has died at the age of 82, the government said on Wednesday.
Scott died in Lusaka at his farm in the Leopards Hill area after an illness, the government said in a statement.
Scott served as vice president under "King Cobra" Michael Sata from 2011 to 2014 and became acting president after Sata's death in October 2014, serving until January 2015.
Scott's brief tenure made him Africa's first white head of state in two decades, since South Africa's F.W. de Klerk left office in 1994.
A Cambridge-educated economist born in Zambia to Scottish parents, Scott was constitutionally barred from running in the subsequent presidential election because both his parents were not born in Zambia.
President Hakainde Hichilema has accorded Scott a state funeral, according to the government statement.
Reporting by Chris Mfula
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday his deputy, Carlos Cuerpo, would provisionally run the Transport Ministry after Oscar Puente's resignation over two deadly high-speed train crashes this year.
Democrats seized control of both the Senate and House on Tuesday, scoring sweeping victories in Republican strongholds for the first time in generations as tens of millions of voters delivered a scathing rebuke to President Donald Trump.
Americans headed to the polls in Tuesday's midterm elections to deliver a verdict on the first two years of President Donald Trump's second term, with surveys and nonpartisan analysts favoring Democrats to wrest the House of Representatives from Republicans while control of the Senate remains uncertain.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
