Sata missed an opportunity to leave a legacy

DW: What will President Michael Sata be remembered for?

McDonald Chipenzi: Firstly, we mourn with the nation the demise of our president. Michael Sata as president of this republic will be remembered as one of the vicious politicians who fought so hard to get the position of the president. When he formed his party in 2001 people thought that was going nowhere but he is one of the first few politicians who formed the party three months before elections and be able to win a seat at parliamentary level and several of them at local government level. He was a fearless politician, he was contracting issues the way they are and he was a very humorous person. He will be remembered for being one of the politicians who did a lot of politicking throughout his life. Even when people were saying bad things about him he never looked down but he faced the hate right in its face.

So he was a fearless politician, a consummate politician, did he move Zambian democracy forward?

In terms of his leadership, he missed an opportunity to leave a legacy. A legacy of giving the Zambian people an opportunity to have a new constitution. Secondly he missed an opportunity to fulfill most of his promises. Some of them are to do with pro-poor, a policy that he had promised Zambians that they would have more money in their pockets, there would be employment, and indeed he would be able to reduce poverty in the rural areas. Of course, he has done much in terms of road infrastructure and also dividing the country into districts. But with that has also come the cost to the government of today and the one which will take over from him, that so much debts that has been collected under the three years of his leadership. I think he has done very little. He was one of the politicians that have not enjoyed their political powers. People were expecting the Michael Sata they knew in the opposition, the Michael Sata who had promised to shift the country in terms of bringing sanitation and other things but this is the Michael Sata who couldn't do all that because of ill-heath. This has been a sad situation for him as an individual and indeed for the supporters that expected much from him.

How will his death affect Zambia's relations with the rest of Africa and foreign investors?

It will depend on how his cabinet will manage the transition. That will determine the fate of this country in terms of international relations, investment, investors' confidence and even in terms of how our currency will stabilize. I think they have a duty, a mammoth task for that matter to ensure that the stability of the country remains a priority and indeed politics are not played in order to instigate instability. So his death has come as a shock for us in the southern region but as I said he was a person who had not interacted so much with his peers in the southern region because he started feeling very unwell few months before he could acclimatize and acquaint himself with a number of leaders within the region. So we are yet to see what his death would have brought in terms of international relationship with the region.

McDonald Chipenzi is Executive Director of the Zambia Foundation for the Democratic process.

Interview: Mark Caldwell