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. Reuters