hmm I actually see Zig as more of the "new C" and Rust, Go, Nim as more of C++ displacements.
Rust has brought high-level language features, like memory safety, data race free, and an advanced type system to a low level space that didn’t have a great option in place (yes, there were other options, but none ticked all those boxes so elegantly). Rust keeps gaining traction in this space because of all those features.
I’m all for languages finding their niche, and Zig might end up attracting C programmers in a way that Rust doesn’t. That would be great, but the difference with Rust is that it’s attracting programmers to a space where they wouldn’t necessarily have gotten involved before. It’s that fearless mentality, and it’s helping expand the numbers of devs working in this area, and that’s a really good thing. Enabling people to do really great things without worrying about sharp edges and unknown issues, is pretty great.