Until five years ago, Michael Sata — the most charismatic of Zambia’s presidential candidates in the 2006 tripartite elections — was chief executive of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and the chief ”fixer” for former president Frederick Chiluba.
The opposition Patriotic Front (PF) leader, popularly known as ”King Cobra”, has gone on to emerge as the leading opposition presidential contender and rival to incumbent President Levy Mwanawasa.
A chain-smoker and a plain-spoken individual, Sata has taken his critics by surprise for the large grassroots support he has garnered with his party’s populist style. That his presidential bid has been endorsed by Chiluba, a number of high profile lawyers and professionals, has lent validity to his candidature.
At 68 years of age, the oldest and perhaps the most experienced politician among the 2006 presidential aspirants, Sata has plenty of critics who dismiss him as a ”joker” and a ”crude and corrupt” politician. Mwanawasa labelled him as one of the ”most dangerous politicians in the country” and mounted a strong-media campaign against him.
Sata’s detractors despise him for the political thuggery and corruption associated with him during his days as cabinet minister in the Chiluba government and as national secretary — the strongman of the MMD.
Despite the 2006 campaign trail being wrought with storms raised by his abrasive shoot-from-the-hip style, Sata comes across as a decisive thinker and an achievement-driven politician, ready to implement whatever goes with the majority. He has indicated his belief that the law was made for man and not man for the law. Where the two come into conflict, the law must change.
For Zambia’s political ”action-man,” he appears well prepared for the battle for State House famously known as ”Plot One,” and appears to be giving it the best shot.
However, his past career in the MMD government continues to cloud his campaign, with the country’s minority upper-class perceiving it as a return-bid for Chiluba, who is facing trial for alleged corruption and theft of public funds during his years in power from 1991 to 2001.
In September 2001, Sata resigned from the MMD citing what he felt was Chiluba’s fraudulent nomination of Mwanawasa as the party’s presidential candidate for the last legislative elections.
He formed the PF and contested the general elections in which he won 4% of the popular vote while his party won 3%.
A political commentator once described Sata as a bit of a Mussolini, saying: ”He is not good for democracy but he can whip and bully a drunken and demoralised Zambia into action.”
Many people who have worked with Sata say he knows how to get a job done. ”He uses technocrats who perform and he doesn’t feel insecure if someone knows better,” according to Sata’s right-hand man and PF general secretary Guy Scott.
Sata struggles with his image, and Scott says that though the ”Cobra” cultivates a rough image, he ”is truly concerned about people’s suffering — perhaps that’s what makes him charismatic.”
He campaigned around his opposition to high taxation and urged for concessions to boost local enterprise. He also promised Zambians lower taxes to achieve sustainable incomes for people in low-income groups if he is elected as president.
Sata supports citizens’ empowerment and said he would review the country’s investment act to ensure that foreign investment helps develop the fragile economy in a ”meaningful way”, and to provide safe jobs and end the exploitation of locals.
Married to a Roman Catholic doctor and a father of three, Sata hails from Zambia’s rural northern district of Mpika, where he has said he was born ”under a tree”. He lives in a modest house in a suburb of the capital, Lusaka.
He served as a police officer in Zambia’s British colonial administration before being elected a councillor and later governor in the post-independence government of former President Kenneth Kaunda. In the early 1990s, Sata held the health labour and local government cabinet portfolios in the Chiluba administration and later served full-time as the national secretary for the MMD party. — Sapa-dpa