Son of Scottish Immigrants, Guy Scott, Becomes Zambia’s President

Son of Scottish immigrants born in Zambia, Guy Scott, has been sworn in as Zambia interim president until fresh Presidential elections are held in about 90 days time.

It is unclear if he’ll be allowed to contest in the Presidential elections as his parents were not born in Zambia.

Mr. Scott becomes the first white African President in sub-Saharan Africa since apartheid.

He became vice president three years ago.

Former President, Michael Sata, died Tuesday while undergoing treatment for an unknown illness in London.

Scott was born in 1944 in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, which later became Zambia after independence from Britain.

Shortly after his graduation from Cambridge University and University of Sussex with a degree in economics and a doctorate in cognitive science, he returned home and worked for the finance ministry.

He later took a break from the ministry and ventured into wheat and strawberry farming. But politics wooed him back in in 1990, when he was elected to chair the nation’s agriculture committee.

“Dr Scott’s participation in Zambian politics was inspired by his late father, who was an ally of Zambian nationalists and a founder of anti-colonial government newspapers including the African Mail, now the Zambia Daily Mail,” a profile on his party website says.

His father was a member of parliament for the capital of Lusaka before independence.

Before joining Sata’s opposition party, which became the ruling party three years ago, he briefly left politics to focus on his agricultural business.

His new position will put him in the history books.

South African President Frederik de Klerk was the continent’s last white President. His party lost to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa’s first multiracial, fully democratic elections in 1994.

De Klerk took a deputy position in the new government for two years.