ON Tuesday November 11 2014 Zimbabwe joins the rest of Africa and the world in paying their last respects to an outstanding pan-Africanist.
Because of his stance towards imperialism and his concern for the social welfare of his own people there was so much in common between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
President Mugabe aptly described the two countries as ‘geographical twins’.
The world still remembers the seamless joint hosting of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly last year by these ‘twins’.
One can still picture President Mugabe and President Sata joking intimately as they witnessed the success of their joint project.
Surely these two were more than just mere neighbouring Presidents.
It is worth noting that one of the criterions of the West in assessing African leaders is their attitude towards President Mugabe.
Their utterances are expected to conform with the propaganda they have spewed against him.
President Sata, who was nicknamed ‘King Cobra’ because of his sharp tongue which was guided by his conscience, infuriated the West for his open support for President Mugabe.
Not only that.
He went further by attacking the West for being imperialists and unbridled capitalists whose interpretation of events in Zimbabwe, in general, and President Mugabe’s philosophy, in particular, were well off the mark.
This was very much unlike his predecessor Levy Mwanawasa.
In a bid to please the West and woo donors he once labelled Zimbabwe a ‘sinking Titanic’ just out of the blue.
That is why as reported elsewhere in this edition, British papers are more concerned with the appointment of Guy Scott, a whiteman as interim president, than the death of pan-Africanist Sata.
Obviously they are less concerned about Sata because of the Mugabe connection.
President Sata was a man of the poor Zambians and not the British imperial press.
His love for the poor is amply demonstrated by his massive project in resurfacing the roads including those covering rural areas.
And investors were compelled to contribute to this humanitarian exercise.
When it came to the Zambian poor, Sata was a man of action.
When Chinese projects had poor local content as employees, Sata ordered the immediate redress of the anomally.
It was not free for all for investors in Zambia as Shoprite Zambia shops might testify.
When the South African-based giants tried to retrench
3 000 workers last year, ‘King Cobra’ struck by threatening to shut down the shops completely.
Shoprite backtracked.
Sata had also threatened to shut down all mining concerns which harboured the idea of laying off workers.
In his three years in power, civil servants in Zambia had seen their salaries increased by between 40 and 200 percent.
Minister Patrick Chinamasa can bear witness on our own President’s personal stance towards salaries of civil servants.
As a pan-Africanist, Sata tried to bring back Zambia on its nationalistic rails.
When elected president, he wasted no time in showing that he was a legitimate heir of Zambia’s uhuru, by renaming the main Lusaka Airport Kenneth Kaunda.
To imagine that his predecessors like Fredrick Chiluba had the guts to harass Zambia’s founding father shows the extent to which investor puppetry can sink.
President Sata’s pan-African spirit could also be seen in his active participation and support of organisations like the African Union, COMESA and SADC.
President Sata might have died, but his footprints might be a useful guide not only for Zambia, but for the rest of Africa.
May his soul rest in peace.