MY INTEREST in the political career of Michael Sata was sparked in late 2010 when I happened to come across a radio discussion on the BBC World Service. The speaker was remembering a harsh-tongued and unpredictable politician, with a rude and aggressive style of politics seen by some as brilliant and by others as a disaster. Though uneducated, this man was described as an organically intelligent politician who had a natural campaigning ability and whose public rallies attracted thousands. I thought to myself, ‘They must be referring to Sata. Is he dead?’ In fact, I was way off the mark. It turned out that the subject was not the (still living) leader of Zambia's main opposition party, the Patriotic Front (PF), but rather George Alfred Brown, a British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in the 1960s and who died in 1985. Yet it struck me how Brown's rise to political prominence bore an uncanny resemblance to Sata’s.

Both Brown and Sata had little formal education but had a ‘man of the people’ common touch and a talent for making mincemeat of their more educated opponents on the campaign trail. Both cut their teeth in trade unions, were elected as members of parliament in urban constituencies, and rose rapidly within party hierarchies. Brown held several Cabinet positions under Prime Minister Harold Wilson during the 1960s. These positions included Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, which effectively made Brown the second in command. Brown and Sata could have crossed paths in these years, on the street or the railway platform, as, at the time, Sata was living and working in England as a porter at London's Victoria Station. Thereafter, their career trajectories went in opposite directions. Sata returned to Zambia and held several Cabinet positions under Presidents Kenneth Kaunda and Frederick Chiluba in the 1980s and 1990s, including latterly Minister without Portfolio, a role that gave him free rein and, it turned out, a little too much power for his own good.

However, the duo had starkly contrasting fortunes following their exits fromfr9 government. After resigning as Foreign Secretary in 1968, Brown's fortune was a drink-fuelled slide into political oblivion. He lost his seat in 1970 and left the Labour Party in 1976. Announcing his resignation, he tripped and fell into a gutter, glass in hand – a literal fall from grace.