Former president Frederick Chiluba dies

Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba has died at his home early Saturday morning after suffering heart and kidney problems. Chiluba was a one-time democracy hero whose reputation was left in tatters by his life of luxury once in office. 

AFP PHOTO / THOMAS NSAMA

The former president ended the 27-year rule of Zambia's founding president Kennneth
Kaunda in 1991 and was initially hailed for saving the country from one-party rule.

He became president of the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy, MMD, a coalition of unions, civic and church groups as well as former Kaunda loyalists who had grown disillusioned with his autocratic style.

At first he was welcomed by the West who had struggled to get on with the leftist Kaunda and he won praise for his emphasis on democracy, human rights and governmental transparency.

This diminutive African leader oversaw the sale of more than 250 state companies to private firms and while the sell-offs were originally seen as part of a programme of reforms, much of the sale price went unaccounted for while hundreds of thousands were left out of work.

Chiluba was known to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds on buying tailor-made exotic suits, high-heeled shoes and monogrammed shirts when millions of his people lived on less than a dollar a day.

He also gathered a reputation for the kind of authoritarian tendencies which had been derided in Kaunda: sacking colleagues, jailing outspoken journalists, buyng off opponents and rounding up rivals.

After serving the constitutionally allowed two terms in office, Chiluba attempted to amend the constitution to run for a third term but he met vigorous resistance, with tens of thousands protesting in the streets.

Sensing a humiliating defeat, he drew up a hasty exit strategy which saw him hurriedly pluck a successor, Levy Mwanawasa, from political obscurity.

In many ways, Chiluba was an enigma and much of his background remained in dispute even his exact date of birth was never confirmed although he was believed to have been born in 1942 in what is now Zambia's northern neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Chiluba was initially married to Vera Tembo for 33 years, with whom he had nine children before he divorced and married Regina, a former women's leader in the MMD.