Ex-British Rail porter rides an anti-Chinese wave to power in Zambia

The election of Michael Sata – who once worked as a porter for British Rail – as Zambia’s president sparked jubilant scenes on the streets of the capital, Lusaka.

Mr Sata emerged victorious from Tuesday’s ballot, taking 43 per cent of the vote in the southern African state, compared with just over 36 per cent for the incumbent Rupiah Banda. After 20 years in power, Mr Banda’s Movement for Multi-Party Democracy stepped aside in a peaceful transition of power that belied a bad-tempered campaign.

In a live address on Zambian television yesterday, Mr Banda conceded defeat. “We will accept the results. We are a democratic party and we know no other way,” he said before going on to reject accusations of vote rigging and corruption that dogged previous elections, most notably in 2008 when Mr Sata lost by just 35,000 votes.

Mr Sata, nicknamed “King Cobra” on account of his acid tongue, ran a populist campaign, calling for stricter labour laws and condemning the growing Chinese presence in Zambia’s mining industry.

It was a message that was particularly well received in urban areas, with both Lusaka and the country’s copper belt towns voting overwhelmingly for the 74-year-old former minister for health.

“Let’s go Sata” chanted huge crowds on Cairo Road, Lusaka’s main thoroughfare, when the Patriotic Front victory was confirmed late on Thursday.

Such celebrations stood in stark contrast to the mood earlier in the day, with two dying in riots as frustrations over delays in vote-counting threatened to spiral out of control.

But much feared violence never materialised, and yesterday tens of thousands flocked to the streets of the former British colony as Mr Sata was inaugurated, the fourth Zambian president since the end of Kenneth Kaunda’s one-party rule in 1991.

Moses, a 20-year-old first-time voter from the Lusaka township of Mtendere, voted for the Patriotic Front because “I want a job and a future”.

More than two-thirds of Zambia’s 13 million people live on less than $2 a day and formal employment opportunities are limited. Most survive on subsistence farming.

HIV/AIDS, while declining, remains a grave health risk in a country with a life expectancy of just over 37 years.

Improving the lot of a vast underemployed workforce while retaining international investors will be the new president’s greatest challenge.

Yesterday, the Zambian kwacha slipped to a 14-month low against the dollar amid fears that Mr Sata’s populist policies and anti-China rhetoric could damage an economy that has register annual growth of six per cent for the past five years, aided by rising prices for Zambia’s main export, copper.

China’s extensive presence in Zambia – alongside mines, the Chinese government has invested heavily in infrastructure projects including a new hospital and conference centre in Lusaka – has garnered plenty of attention, both inside and outside the country.

Mr Sata has strong support in the mining region, where he has accused Chinese managers of exploiting employees with abuse, low pay and poor working conditions.

During the 2006 election, Mr Sata made China’s growing influence a political issue, threatening to run “bogus” Chinese investors out of the country if elected.

He also said then that his party would reinstate a 25 per cent windfall tax on mines, which was abolished in 2009.

Mr Banda’s government infuriated many when it refused to prosecute two Chinese managers charged with attempted murder for shooting at coal miners during a dispute last year.

A court quietly dropped the charges this year after the mine agreed to pay compensation to 13 wounded workers.