{"id":29489,"date":"2022-03-14T11:00:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/?p=29489"},"modified":"2022-03-14T11:00:15","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T08:00:15","slug":"former-zambian-president-banda-dies-at-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/14\/former-zambian-president-banda-dies-at-85\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Zambian President Banda Dies At 85"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rupiah Banda, who was Zambia&#8217;s president from 2008 to 2011, has died at the age of 85 after suffering from colon cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;His life of service to our country, and to our continent, represents the highest form of patriotism,&#8221; President Hakainde Hichilema said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr Banda, a former diplomat, was serving as vice-president when, in 2008, President Levy Mwanawasa suffered a stroke and later died. He then took office, becoming the country&#8217;s fourth president, and won the subsequent election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But he stepped down in 2011 after losing that year&#8217;s poll to Michael Sata. Mr Banda was widely praised at the time for accepting defeat, rather than challenging the result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His time in office was dogged by corruption allegations and in 2013 he was arrested after being accused of stealing millions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He denied the accusations, describing them as being part of a witch hunt, and was never convicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>BBC Africa News<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rupiah Banda, who was Zambia&#8217;s president from 2008 to 2011, has died at the age of 85 after suffering from colon cancer. &#8220;His life of service to our country, and to our continent, represents the highest form of patriotism,&#8221; President Hakainde Hichilema said. Mr Banda, a former diplomat, was serving as vice-president when, in 2008, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":29491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[119],"class_list":["post-29489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-uganda-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29492,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489\/revisions\/29492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}