Zig's trying to be a "nicer C" that's easy to learn and fast to compile. It's a great language with a lot of neat design, and definitely setting itself up to be a "valid challenger" in a lot of the systems-y, performance-focused domains Rust targets. But it's not trying to compete with Rust on the safety/program correctness front.

Almost none of the Rust features discussed in this subthread are present in Zig, such as ownership, borrowing, shared vs. exclusive access, lifetimes, traits, RAII, or statically checked thread safety.