ONE of the most colourful men in African politics happens to be white. Guy Scott is the vice president of Zambia, but his race is probably the least exceptional thing about him.

On a recent afternoon in Lusaka, Guy Scott held court with the kind of candour - and eccentricity - seldom heard from today’s media-honed political class. He dismissed South Africans as “backward”, insisted that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe wants to quit and discussed Zambia by way of references to Marlon Brando and the Klingon empire.

The 68-year-old grandfather was just back from Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in London last month when he took me on an impromptu tour of an emerald auction at the InterContinental Lusaka hotel. The son of English and Scottish immigrants - his father Alexander was also an MP here - Scott gave an interview that wasted little time on diplomatic language.

South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, bore the brunt of Scott’s venomous assault. “The South Africans are very backward in terms of historical development,” he said. “I hate South Africans. That’s not a fair thing to say because I like a lot of South Africans, but they really think they’re the bees’ knees and actually they’ve been the cause of so much trouble in this part of the world.

“I have a suspicion the blacks model themselves on the whites now that they’re in power. ‘Don’t you know who we are, man?’”

Scott scoffed at the inclusion of South Africa in the Brics grouping of emerging economies. “They think in Brics that the ‘s’ actually stands for South Africa whereas it stands for Africa. Nobody would want to go in for a partnership with Brazil, China, India and South Africa for Christ’s sake.

“I dislike South Africa for the same reason that Latin Americans dislike the United States, I think. It’s just too big and too unsubtle.”

Warming to his theme, Scott let rip at South African president Jacob Zuma, comparing him with the last apartheid leader, FW de Klerk. “He’s very like De Klerk. He tells us, ‘You just leave Zimbabwe to me’. Excuse me, who the hell liberated you anyway, was it not us? I mean, I quite like him, he seems a rather genial character but I pity him his advisers.”

Discussing neighbouring Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe has ruled for 33 years, he disclosed: “I think if you asked him he’d say it was enough. That’s what he said to us a few months ago. I said the way forward in African democracy is the way we do it in Zambia. He said, ‘I absolutely agree, I wish it would happen to me’.” As in lose an election? “Yes, and a smooth handover. I think he meant it, or he was toying with the idea of meaning it. He wanted to hear how it sounded, maybe. Or something.”

Scott went on to describe 89-year-old Mugabe’s persona. “He’s a funny chap. He seems to doze off and then he suddenly laughs at a joke while in the middle of dozing. And very articulate, without a note, without a scrap of anything.

“He’s an anglophone. He loves to give lectures on the English language, English weighing systems, English this or that. He was a teacher and so he taught himself all that.”

By arrangement with the Guardian