Zambia elects and swears in new president. Zambia swore in a new president Sunday. The country’s newly elected leader, Rupiah Banda, 72, already had been serving as interim president after the nation’s popular leader, Levy Mwanawasa, died in August. Banda was sworn in right after the close poll results were announced. “I promise to be an agent of continuity, good governance and will campaign against corruption. I also promise to fight poverty because poverty is demeaning,” Banda said during his inauguration, reports CNN. The vote was not without controversy, however. Opposition leader Michael Sata (who won 38 percent of the vote to Banda’s 40 percent) accused the ruling party of attempting to rig the ballot before the results were released and said he’d challenge the results. But international observers say the poll was legit.  Leaders from Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe (of whom Mwanawasa was very critical) attended the inauguration ceremony. Banda, who will serve out the last three years of Mwanawasa’s five-year term, will keep Zambia’s economy a priority; the nation saw foreign investments skyrocket from $71.7 million in 2001 to $4 billion in 2008 under Mwanawasa’s rule.
South African leader blasts ex-party members. Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), didn’t mince words when talking about ex-party mates. In the past few days, Zuma called former ANC members who plan to launch a breakaway party in December poisonous snakes and even compared them to bigamists, reports CNN. “Even before the divorce has been concluded, they have now announced that they will be getting married to the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties to form a coalition,” he told rally goers in Soweto. And because they are planning to unite with other opposition groups, he called them “bigamists.” His comments came as members of the breakaway party held a meeting this weekend. The new party, which currently has no name, has lofty goals- including winning next year’s presidential elections, according to Mbahazima Shilowa, who was the premier of Gauteng. But the odds of that happening are slim because ANC has been a dominant force in the country ever since 1994, the year apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela became president. But members of the breakaway faction accuse ANC of going against the ideals of Mandela, and if the new party unites with other opposition parties, the coalition could be a force in various local elections.

TAGS: African National Congress, breakaway, Jacob Zuma, president, South Africa, Zambia

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