Zambia's acting president Guy Scott is new 'Last King of Scotland'

Idi Amin, the self-proclaimed last King of Scotland, might have an heir to the throne. The brutal former Ugandan dictator coined the title out of his admiration for the Scots and their historical battle against the English. Guy Scott, however, the new acting president of Zambia, has a much more personal claim to the moniker. Born to a Scottish doctor-turned-politician father, Scott became Africa's only white head of state last week, following the death of president Michael Sata in London. "It's a bit of a shock to the system, coupled with this news from London," Scott, 70, said. "Everyone is getting used to calling me 'Your Excellency', and I'm getting used to it. There are truckloads of guys, police following me on motorbikes. It's very strange but I'm very proud to be entrusted with it." Sata, who swept platforms at British railway stations before rising to the presidency, died aged 77 after a long and unspecified illness. Dubbed "King Cobra" for his abrasive rhetoric, he enjoyed warm relations with President Robert Mugabe of neighbouring Zimbabwe and was accused by critics of autocratic tendencies. Scott will run the copper-rich country for at least the 90 days until fresh elections are held. However, his elevation is unlikely to be permanent, because his parents were both born in Britain, Zambia's former colonial ruler. While his father was a Scotsman, his mother was English and Zambia's constitution has a clause that a president must be born of Zambian parents. Scott was born in Livingstone, when the country was still Northern Rhodesia. But in previous rulings on the question of presidential parentage, Zambia's Supreme Court has found that people who lived in Northern Rhodesia and became citizens at independence were eligible to be president because there was no Zambia their parents could have lived in before 1964. Scott is famous in Zambia for his jocular, outspoken - and sometimes undiplomatic - tongue. Scott, appointed vice-president in 2011, said in a 2013 interview with The Guardian that black South African leaders behaved like their white predecessors and compared President Jacob Zuma with the last white South African president, F.W. de Klerk, who lost office when Nelson Mandela's African National Congress swept to power in 1994. The departure of de Klerk marked the last time a white man was the head of state in sub-Saharan Africa until now. Branding South Africans as "backward", he added: "I hate South Africans. I dislike South Africa for the same reason that Latin Americans dislike the United States, I think. It's just too big and too unsubtle." At the time, South Africa summoned the Zambian ambassador to explain the remarks. But on Wednesday, the South African government issued a statement suggesting relations had moved on: "President Sata belongs to the generation of leaders produced by Zambia during the colonial times and gallantly pursued the anti-colonial struggle." In another example of his candour, Scott once called the Indian city of Jaipur "a terrible dump", while he has also spoken of the surprise of former US president George W. Bush at their introduction in Lusaka. In 2012, Scott told The Spectator that Bush "thought they were kidding" when Scott was introduced to him as vice-president. Sata was similarly frank. During that visit, Sata reportedly chided the former US president for arriving 15 minutes late for their meeting, describing the 66-year-old as "the young man" and berating him about colonialism. When he was elected in 2011, Scott, whose wife is from Greenwich, southeast London, said there had been no hint of resentment at a white man becoming vice-president - despite standing out as the only white politician in a government of a country whose population of whites is less than 1 per cent. "I have long suspected Zambia is moving from a post-colonial to a cosmopolitan condition," he said at the time. In the Spectator interview, he said that Sata once asked him: "What would you be if you weren't white?" "I said, 'the president?' That shut him up," Scott recalled. The ruling Patriotic Front's (PF) vice-president, Scott has been a lawmaker and has worked as a planner in the finance ministry. As minister of agriculture under the now opposition Movement for Multi-party Democracy between 1991 and 1995, he successfully steered the country through a drought and swine fever. In 1996 he resigned from the MMD and formed the Lima Party, (which means farming in local vernacular). It failed to gain traction and fizzled out before he decided to join the PF. He became vice-president after the PF party won the 2011 elections in which he was Sata's running mate. He thinks some African leaders regard him as "a sort of mascot, a good luck charm for African politics". Sata's government recently cracked down on political opponents and critical journalists who reported on his long-suspected illness and frequent "working trips" abroad, apparently for medical treatment. In June the authorities charged three opposition activists for claiming that the president was dying. The president had not been seen in public since returning from the UN general assembly last month, where he failed to make a scheduled speech and police said doctors treated him in a hotel room. But he made a rare appearance on September 19 to tell parliament: "I am not dead yet." Asked if Sata, who leaves behind a country where unemployment is about 60 per cent, had chosen him as his successor before his death, Scott said: "He would never be so polite as to do that. But he said he was happy that I was there, to take over if needed. "I hadn't spoken to him for some days. I won't run for the presidency at the election because constitutionally, I can't." A likely contender for the presidency is Edgar Lungu, the defence minister, who stood in recently as acting president. Scott went to school in Zambia and Zimbabwe - then colonially known as Northern and Southern Rhodesia. He later went to study at Cambridge University in Britain, where he graduated with a degree in economics and then obtained a doctorate in cognitive science from Sussex University. After that he lectured and researched in robotics at Oxford University. Scott is married to Charlotte and they have four children. Two of their children live in Britain and one is studying there, while the fourth works in Zambia. The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, McClatchy-Tribune

Zambia's acting president Guy Scott is new 'Last King of Scotland'

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Guy Scott, Africa's only white head of state, is a man who's not afraid to speak his mind, even if it might lead to a few ruffled feathers

Guy Scott, Africa's only white head of state, is a man who's not afraid to speak his mind, even if it might lead to a few ruffled feathers