Adventures in Zambian Politics: A Story in Black and White by Guy Scott (review)

Political scientists are inclined to disregard political memoirs. Perhaps they tend to be engaging and readable to an extent liable to make academics suspicious. They are also 'unscientific' – unconcerned as they are with establishing the extent of their own representativeness and instead illuminating the human experience(s) of becoming and being a professional politician – in ways that both the positivist right and the critical-theory left find irrelevant or even actively 'unhelpful'. The promise of (auto)biography for students of politics, however, is precisely that it demonstrates how the experiences and perspectives of those at the coal face can shed light on some of the core concerns of the discipline. As Miles Larmer suggests in his foreword, the good ones promise nothing less than a glimpse of 'how politics actually works' (p. xv). Guy Scott's, fortunately, is a very good one.

The book is structured largely chronologically across Scott's life and career, and focuses particularly on his decades-long relationship with Michael Sata. Clearly aiming for a largely non-expert and non-Zambian readership, he includes a large amount of background on the country's history, geography and politics, as well as chapters on particular themes such as economics or relations with China. It is at its best, however, when the author concentrates on his own 'adventures' in Zambian politics, culminating in his vice presidency under Sata as the highest-ranking white official in postcolonial Africa.

Like politicians the world over, Scott locates his interest in politics in his childhood and family lineage. His parents (a Scottish doctor and English nurse) were politically engaged, racially egalitarian liberals, and the family home was frequented by a succession of nationalist luminaries. At independence, Scott took Zambian citizenship and worked in various jobs prior to moving to the UK in the 1980s to pursue a brief academic career in robotics. (He has some amusing observations on how an academic mindset and training may serve one poorly in politics.) An opponent of Kaunda's one-party state, he returned in 1990 to support the arrival of multiparty democracy and served for several years in the government of Frederick Chiluba (1991–2002) prior to his dismissal. His friend Sata, meanwhile, stuck close to Chiluba throughout in the hopes of succeeding him, only for Levy Mwanawasa to be anointed instead. Sata, with Scott, established the Patriotic Front (PF) in response. Together they spent ten years in opposition under Mwanawasa (2002–08) and his successor Rupiah Banda (2008–11) before Sata's victory in the 2011 election.

Scott admits to being astonished upon his appointment as vice president, and to this day cannot claim to fully understand Sata's reasoning. He senses, however, that the new president sought to send a message about Zambia and about his administration – a message of literal post-coloniality. That supporters greeted Scott with cries of 'Obama! Obama!' is a telling detail, indicative of a multi- or even post-racial cosmopolitan aspiration. Typically, Scott is certain also of a more prosaic motivation on Sata's part: he wanted Zambia to stand out from the crowd of African countries in international forums, attendance at which he would frequently delegate to Scott.

The Sata who emerges from the narrative is a consummate politician, an ideal combination of high principle and low cunning. In fascinating detail, Scott lays out his friend's flexible relationship with the truth; his underhand sabotaging of potential rivals; his ruthless pursuit of power; and the carefully calibrated 'man of the people' image that he (sometimes unscrupulously and divisively) employed to gain it. At times, the book reads, as Larmer suggests, like 'a Machiavelli's Prince for twenty-first-century Africa' (p. xiv).

Sata is also, however, a 'populist' by conviction. Uninterested in amassing personal wealth, in Scott's account he sought to exercise power in the service of 'ordinary people' against an elite class whom he regarded with something close to...