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Edgar Lungu, former Zambian president, dies at 68

Edgar Lungu, former Zambian president, dies at 68

eNCA2 days ago

Zambia's former president Edgar Lungu, who held power for almost seven years until 2021, died Thursday in a hospital in South Africa at the age of 68, his party and family announced.
Lungu had been receiving specialised medical treatment in a clinic in Pretoria, the Patriotic Front (PF), his political party, said in a statement.
"My father had been under medical supervision in recent weeks," his daughter and member of the country's national assembly Tasila Lungu-Mwansa said in a video shared on social media.
"His condition was managed with dignity and privacy with support from all well-wishers," she said, without providing details of the cause of his death.
Lungu, a trained military officer and lawyer, became the country's sixth president in 2015 after the death in office of his predecessor Michael Sata.
While campaigning to be elected leader of the large but sparsely populated, resource-rich country, Lungu described himself as an "ordinary Zambian of humble beginnings".
He narrowly won the 2016 election against Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND) after a violent campaign that saw clashes between the two parties.
He pledged to unite the country and rebuild the economy.
- Conservative -
Amnesty International said that repression under Lungu had pushed Zambia to the edge, with a "brutal crackdown on human rights" and "brazen attacks on any form of dissent".
On social issues, he revealed a conservative side, saying for example that gay rights were "foreign".
Born in 1956 in Chadiza in eastern Zambia, Lungu was from the minority Nsenga ethnic group, but he often described himself as a non-tribal.
"In private, ECL, as he is affectionately known, was disarmingly personable and very down to earth," Musa Mwenye, a former attorney general posted on X.
He stepped down from the presidency in 2021 when Hichilema, the current president, won fresh elections by a landslide. He had said he planned to run for president again in the 2026 elections.

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‘A checkered legacy'': Zambia's former president Edgar Lungu dies aged 68
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Former Zambian president Edgar Lungu died on Thursday at the age of 68, six months after an attempted return to politics was thwarted by a court ruling that he could not run for office again. Lungu was the sixth president of the Southern African nation and held office from 2015 to 2021, when he lost an election to long-time opposition leader President Hakainde Hichilema. He was praised during his tenure for a massive road-building programme, but also ran Zambia's finances deeply into the red. The country defaulted on its international debt in 2020, precipitating his election loss. Lungu died on Thursday morning at a medical centre in Pretoria, where he had been receiving specialised treatment, his political party, the Patriotic Front, said in a statement on social media. The party also posted a video on social media of Lungu's daughter Tasila Lungu, a member of Zambia's parliament, announcing his death. "My father had been under medical supervision in recent weeks. The condition was managed with dignity and privacy," she said. Lungu suffered from a rare disorder that caused a narrowing of the food pipe, for which he had been treated in SA before. Shortly after he took office in 2015 he fell ill and underwent a procedure in SA which the presidency said at the time was not available in Zambia. Lungu was born on November 11 1956, in Ndola in the Zambian copper belt. A lawyer by training, he served as justice and defence minister under former president Michael Sata before taking over the presidency when Sata died in 2015. After taking office Lungu quickly embarked on legislative reforms which were seen as progressive, including amending the constitution to reduce the power of the president. He won a presidential election in 2016 that gave him a five-year term in office. But shortly before it ended he tried and failed to reverse the constitutional changes he had made. "The legacy of Edgar Lungu is a checkered," said political analyst Lee Habasonda at the University of Zambia.

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