LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — Guy Scott, the Zambian politician who briefly served as acting president to become Africa’s first white head of state in more than two decades, died Wednesday, the Zambian government said. He was 82.
Scott was Zambia’s vice president and stood in as president of the southern African country for three months when Michael Sata died in office in 2014.
That made Scott the first white head of state in Africa since South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk, the last leader under apartheid who left office after that country’s first all-race elections in 1994 voted in Nelson Mandela.
Scott died at his farm in the capital, Lusaka, the government said in a statement. It said current Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema had accorded him a state funeral, though the date was not yet announced.
Scott, who had Scottish and English heritage, was first elected to Zambia’s Parliament in 1991 and later served as minister of agriculture, food and fisheries before becoming vice president in 2011.
It made him the first white vice president of Zambia, and later its first white president, since independence from British colonial rule in 1964.
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