Yes. I think Zig is a safer C, while Rust is a safer C++. C programmers will be more excited by Zig than by rust, and the opposite is true for C++ afficionados.
Those are nice taglines, but while Rust is a safer C++ in the sense that it is a language that espouses C++'s design philosophy and has a similar feel to it, Zig is something new altogether. The only thing that makes it more similar to C than to C++ is that C is an extremely simple language, as is Zig, while C++ is an extremely complex language. But other than that, Zig is a low-level language that is its own family, and with a design that is radically different from either C or C++; it's hard to compare it to anything, really. Zig goes well beyond C in its power of abstraction to match C++/Rust, but it does so in a very different way than C++/Rust.
They're low-level languages -- with all the attention to low-level detail all low-level languages require -- that aim to appear like high-level code on the page. All the same details are still there, and you must confront them when changing the code, but they don't appear as text when you look at the code.
The safety guarantees of Rust are much stronger than Zig's. For example Rust statically prevents use-after-free and data races, and Zig doesn't (and I don't think anyone expects it ever to). To me this matters more than which one is more like C or C++ (partly because I don't think Rust is very much like either).
It's interesting people keep saying this. I see Rust as being much closer to C than it is to C++. Rust is safer C with the bare minimum of added advanced features.
