In an unprecedented move, President Robert Mugabe’s government has refused burial at Heroes’ Acre to former president Canaan Sodindo Banana, who died last week in London after a long illness, an official spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Since Banana’s death at age 67, state media have devoted extensive coverage to the repatriation of his body in expectation he would receive a state funeral. At the time of his death, Mugabe paid tribute to Banana, describing him as ”a rare gift to the nation.”
However, when Mugabe’s elite policy making body, the 30 member politburo, met on Monday it refused to grant Banana hero status. It was the first time this has happened since Mugabe instituted the system at 1980 independence, when Banana became figurehead president for seven years.
Politburo secretary for information and publicity Nathan Shamuyarira told state radio on Tuesday this was because Banana set a ”bad example to youth” with his 1998 conviction for homosexual offenses against junior State House staff.
”They (the politburo) could not accord Banana hero status as a matter of principle,” said Shamuyarira. ”Canaan Banana will be given a state-assisted funeral in his home area befitting a former head of state.”
He said full military honors would be according Banana at a ceremony at his birthplace, Esigodini, outside the western provincial capital of Bulawayo. The date for this has yet to be announced.
Black bordered editions of the official daily, The Herald, and precedence given news of pending funeral arrangements led diplomats here to believe honours accorded Banana were meant to set a pattern for Mugabe himself, now 79 and dogged by reports of ill health.
Exposure of Banana’s crimes against young men gravely embarrassed the regime in 1997, coming within months of Mugabe’s denunciation of homosexuals and exhortation to Zimbabweans to arrest any they saw. The High Court heard evidence Mugabe’s politburo were party to a 17-year cover up of Banana’s activities.
He was eventually sentenced to 10 years imprisonment but served only six months in a newly constructed ”open prison” which allowed him shopping trips to Harare. Until the politburo refusal of honours, official reports stressed Banana’s encouragement of talks that led to the December 1987 unity pact between Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party and another party led by the late vice-president Joshua Nkomo.
In addition to burial at the National Shrine outside Harare amid pomp and political speeches, those accorded hero status are exempted from estate duties on their business empires. Their families are assured free medical attention, education and pensions regularly adjusted to keep pace with 455% runaway hyperinflation. Some 90 people have received the coveted honour. – Sapa-AP