{"id":6696,"date":"2011-09-24T12:17:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-24T11:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6696"},"modified":"2011-09-24T12:42:16","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T11:42:16","slug":"the-new-president-of-zambia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6696","title":{"rendered":"The new president of Zambia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seven years ago, I spent a few days in Zambia when I was on holiday at Victoria Falls [see my account of the visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/SouthernAfrica.html#Falls\">here<\/a>]. Vee and I befriended our hotel chambermaid &#8211; who is now a teacher &#8211; and we are still in regular touch with her.<\/p>\n<p>So I was struck by the news this week that Zambia has elected a new president &#8211; the 74 year old Michael Sata &#8211; and the message from our young friend in Zambia that she voted for him. It is a tribute to Zambians and a contrast with much of Africa that they have changed presidents and parties in a democratic election.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Sata once worked at Victoria Station in central London. He has been a member of three political parties and this was his fourth presidential bid. Known as &#8216;King Cobra&#8217;, he is a striking and controversial figure and you can read more about him <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-africa-15034694\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seven years ago, I spent a few days in Zambia when I was on holiday at Victoria Falls [see my account of the visit here]. Vee and I befriended our hotel chambermaid &#8211; who is now a teacher &#8211; and we are still in regular touch with her. So I was struck by the news [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6696"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6704,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions\/6704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}