Lusaka - Zambian President Michael Sata attended the opening of Parliament on Friday looking healthy and walking unaided, easing anxiety about the health of the 77-year-old who has been away from the public eye for three months.
His appearance in front of a parliamentary honour guard was the first time Sata had been seen in public in the capital since a televised June 19 meeting with Chinese Vice-President Li Yuanchao.
Sata took part in a campaign rally in a town 500km from Lusaka last week in what analysts said was a deliberate attempt to quash speculation about his health. However, he only spoke for a few minutes.
Vice-president Guy Scott told parliament in late June that Sata was on a “working holiday” in Israel. Israeli official sources told Reuters he was there receiving medical treatment.
Sata suffered a heart attack in 2008 and his opponents said he collapsed during a six-week election campaign in 2011, a report the president denied.
The copper-producing southern African nation is due to hold its next election in 2016. - Reuters