The former president of Zambia, Edgar Lungu, died at the age of 68, said his party in a statement.
He had received “specialized treatment in South Africa” for an unknown disease, added the Patriotic Front (PF).
Lungu led Zambia for six years from 2015 and lost the 2021 election to current President Hakaine Hichilema with a large margin.
After that defeat, he left politics, but later returned to the fight. He had ambitions to compete again for the presidency, but at the end of last year the Constitutional Court forbade him to run, ruling that he had already served the maximum two conditions.
In a short videoLungu’s daughter Tasila said that the former head of state, who had been “under medical supervision in recent weeks”, died in a clinic in the capital of South Africa, Pretoria, at 06:00 (04:00 GMT) on Thursday.
“At the moment of sorrow we are calling on the spirit of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’ – the timeless credo that led President Lungu’s service to our country,” she added in an emotional explanation.
Lungu was first president in January 2015 after winning a special presidential election caused by the death of Michael Sata.
After completing the term of office of SATA, he won in power in 2016 and took just over 50% of the votes.
But after six years at the helm, Lungu was blamed for a struggling economy and high unemployment. In 2021 he lost almost a million voices with Hichilema who used widespread dissatisfaction with the electorate.
He said he retired in the aftermath of the vote, but returned to Frontline politics in 2023 when the popularity of his successor decreased.
“I am ready to fight from the front, not from behind, to defend democracy. Those who are ready for this fight, please come with me, I am everything for it,” Mr Lungu told supporters at the time.
Lungu was a lawyer through training, but enjoyed a meteorical rise in politics after winning a seat in parliament as a PF Member of Parliament in 2011.
He entered the government as a vice-minister in the vice-president’s office in that year and rose in just over 12 months of the Minister of the Interior.
He later became Minister of Defense and then justice. A good friend described Lungu as a “good foot soldier, lawyer and politician, father, husband and grandparent”.
Lungu, born on November 11, 1956, graduated in 1981 with a diploma at the University of Zambia. He also followed military training at the then Milenez Army College in Kabwe.
He later worked at Andre Masiye and proponents of the company, Barclays Bank and Zambia consolidated copper mines.
Additional reporting by BBC -Monitoring
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