RIP Zambia's White Veep

Guy Scott (1944-2026)

In 2012, I narrowly missed meeting Guy Scott in London on a visit to meet investors as well as an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Zambian and Malawian agriculture and development.

My hope was to grab him to talk about the sulphur emissions blighting the lives of Zambians living next to Mopani’s Mufulira Mine and Smelter complex.

To me, everything about Scott’s ascendancy to the Vice Presidency in 2011 spelled hope. Here was the only country in modern independent Africa that did not operate a colour bar against whites in Government.

Agnes Ngonde and the women of Butondo in front of the Mopani Heap Leach in 2012

When President Michael Sata, Scott’s political ally in the Patriotic Front (PF) governing party, died in office in October 2014, the astonishing possibility materialised that Zambia might acquire a white President. The message for the world was that Zambia was comfortable and confident enough to airbrush out the iniquities of colonialism and adopt a white man into the role of President in a spirit of unbiased technocratic competence.

How wrong I was.

After 89 days another of the late President’s PF ministers, Edgar Lungu, seized power invoking article 34 of the Zambian constitution stopping leadership by anyone whose parents were not born in the country. Scott - Scots by origin - but born in Livingstone and educated at Cambridge, had opted to become a Zambian national at independence in 1964; thus, committing his working life to the fledgling nation. The clause that was later to obliterate Scott’s career, had been put in place by a previous President (Chiluba) not so much to catch muzungu (white) applicants, but rather to prevent the return of Dr Kaunda, the father of the nation who would have been caught because his parents had been born in Ngoniland (now Malawi)).

Edgar J Lungu, a fellow minister at the time of Sata’s death, replaced Scott and from here it was a short descent into the expropriation of mining assets, autocracy, and corruption.

I do realise that the parlour game of ‘What might have been’ is a fruitless one. Nevertheless, I can’t help wondering whether Zambia - had Scott been allowed to take the helm - might not have evolved away from kleptocracy and the undue influence of multi-national mining companies. What Sata and Scott had attempted to do was leverage the undoubted copper wealth of Zambia for the collection of fair taxes to support the institutions of civil society – schools, universities, hospitals, roads, courts. Of course, those in the business community who dislike this idea refer to this as ‘resource nationalism’.

What was in fact attempted was to reach a just balance with what Zambians still call the ‘investors’ – the multi-nationals who had colonised copper assets in 1999/2000 following the imprecations of the IMF and The World Bank. Those included Glencore, Vedanta and First Quantum. The Chinese at this point had not yet ‘belted and roaded’ the country and the three mentioned - although rapacious - could be communicated with; if for no other reason than their sensitivity to the effect of bad publicity on their western-listed share prices.

The Copperbelt was Scott and Sata’s political heartland, and they knew what they were talking about. I remember Scott coming up to Mufulira, pictured in the papers in open-necked shirt with sleeves rolled up. He had come to Butondo on the outskirts of Mufulira to listen to women campaigning to stop acidic spray bleaching their lungs and eyes. At that time the wind was blowing it into their township from the Mopani heap leach piles. Meanwhile, others in the community complained of the ‘senta’ (the uncaptured sickly sulphur clouds that blew daily onto the townships next the smelter) - and nursed hopes that they too would be heard.

To give Glencore its due (as I do these days) it was possible to talk to the company and, although they had to be dragged to the table, they listened and took action to improve matters for the community. Last year in Feb 2025 when the China-owned Sino-Leach Zambia Ltd dam burst tipping 1.5 million tons of toxic uranium-containing tailings into the Kafue/Zambezi, absolutely nothing was done. Today’s government under Hakainde Hichilema is simply in hoc to China for $6 bln and has little power or influence over them. Instead, his tenure has seen his country’s debt to China and mining companies escalate. Farmers close to Chambishi simply lost their livelihoods and received neither official apology, financial recompense, or environmental restitution.

In the days of Scott, Zambia possessed independent agencies such as the ECZ (Environmental Council of Zambia) who faithfully collected reliable scientific data on emissions, although it was rarely acted upon. This institution was renamed ZEMA in Scott’s time but is today impotent. When, during COP 28 talks in Dec 2023, Hichilema sold Mopani without due process to a UAE entity by the name of IRH (a company with no previous record of copper mining), it sowed the death knell for the town of Mufulira.

A single example of how good governance affects ordinary citizens may been seen in the provision of water. When the Mufulira mine was active, 75% of the town’s water was provided via water pumped to the surface from liberated aquifers. Today, water for the 200,000 citizens of the town is often supplied by standpipes and bowsers because there is not enough mining to generate the water to process, nor sufficient investment in treatment. As a local recently wrote to me

‘Water supply in Mufulira is erratic. Sometimes we only have a little, trickling for less than 3hrs or 4hrs sometimes. Some days some sections go without water for a long time. People are now queuing up for water at communal boreholes or sunk boreholes while some have dug shallow wells’

As for electricity, outages in Mufulira are less frequent than before but prices in homes in the townships are charged on a per unit basis like a home meter in the UK. With the prices higher than before it is a form of electricity rationing based on cost and the ability to pay which is causing fuel poverty.

Meanwhile UPNDs Hichilema is seeking re-election in August this year.

According to Global Witness’ July 2026 report, First Quantum previously backed the President’s UPND party financially and is now its largest funder ahead of the 2026 election – which includes a pledge of up to $50 million. First Quantum it would appear is just another large multinational mining company whose priority appears not to include the wellbeing of the ordinary citizen in whose territory they have mined since the great privatisation in 2000.

It is not provable to suggest that a too close relationship between political funding and lax law is one of the reasons that Zambia’s record of the collection of equitable tax is so poor, however to any reasonable person it does suggest a conflict of interest and therefore harmful to the common good.

In my parlour game I cannot help wondering if Guy Scott would have done better.

Anthony Lipmann

05.08.26

Published www.lord-copper.com