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LUSAKA (Reuters) - Chinese and other Asian mining firms in Zambia are creating "slave labour" conditions in Africa's top copper producer, with scant regard for safety or local culture, the main opposition leader said on Wednesday.

In a typically blunt assessment of the foreign mining sector, Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata, who has a fair chance of unseating President Rupiah Banda in 2011 elections, said the special tax status and "economic zones" granted to outside investors were a political and racial powder-keg.

"We don't hate the Chinese. We don't hate the Malaysians, but when they come here, they should treat us like human beings," Sata, a gruff 72-year-old nicknamed "King Cobra" for his venomous tongue, told Reuters in an interview.

"The Zambian government, by creating zones for the Chinese, the Malaysians, is sitting on a volcano," he said.

"This is a landmine because those who have no land will react one day. Why should there be special conditions for the Chinese and Malaysians? Why should they have special treatment?"

Sata, whose long and varied career includes stints in car assembly plants in Britain and with British Rail, lost a closely contested election in 2008 to Banda's Movement for Multi-party Democracy.

If his two-party opposition coalition hangs together, he has a good chance of ousting Banda next year, many Zambians believe.

It is unclear how his vehement and systematic anti-Chinese rhetoric would sit with the Asian mining firms that now dominate Zambia's Copper Belt, although he said nationalisation of the mines was not an option.