Zambia: Missed opportunities in the feud over Edgar Lungu’s burial

Nearly three months after his death in South Africa on 5 June 2025, Zambia’s former president, Edgar Lungu, remains in a Johannesburg morgue because of a legal row between his family and the Zambian government over where he should be buried. 

On 19 August, I granted an interview to Hot FM, a private radio station in Zambia, about the dispute. Four questions were posed and my answers provide context to understanding the course of the feud since my previous analysis was published last month. 

What is your assessment of how the government and President Hakainde Hichilema have handled the death of former president Edgar Lungu? 

They have handled Lungu’s death very poorly. We know that the relationship between Lungu and Hichilema was fractious but after his death, the president missed several opportunities to rise above personal feelings and emerge as the bigger person. I will highlight only five. 

The first missed opportunity was the management of the funeral venue. After Lungu died and in the spirit of forging cross-party unity, Hichilema could have gone to the secretariat of the Patriotic Front (PF) which the main opposition party had designated as “the official mourning place” to plead with its leadership to say “I know we are political opponents, but we are not enemies. In difficult times like these, let us put our differences aside and mourn together. Let us go and mourn in one place that can accommodate more people.” 

Instead, Hichilema moved to set up a parallel funeral venue a day after the PF did so without consensus. In doing so, the president intensified the partisan divisions and missed a golden opportunity to use a sorrowful moment to build bridges with his political rivals. It is worth noting that the PF, Lungu’s party, only set up a funeral venue after the government delayed doing so after his death. This undue delay caused chaos for mourners who had nowhere to go to mourn him. Hichilema, who subsequently revealed that he had known of Lungu’s death in the early hours of the morning it happened, did not even address the nation on the passing of his predecessor until a week later, on 12 June. The action by the former ruling party to mount a mourning site was thus generally seen as an attempt to fill this perceived vacuum, as ordinary people waited for direction. 

The second missed opportunity was the composition of people that the government chose to negotiate with the family of Lungu when differences emerged between the two parties over the repatriation of his remains from South Africa to Zambia. Instead of sending non-partisan people who enjoyed the trust and respect of the family to negotiate, Hichilema dispatched some of his most vociferous supporters such as former secretary to the cabinet Leslie Mbula, former vice-president Enoch Kavindele and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mulambo Haimbe — people who had made bashing Lungu in life a vocation. This mockery did not help matters. 

The third missed opportunity was perhaps the most important — the refusal by Hichilema to excuse himself from Lungu’s funeral and delegate authority. After Lungu died, the family disclosed that the deceased had told them that in the event of his death, and largely because of how poorly he felt Hichilema’s administration had treated him in life, he did not want his successor anywhere near his body or funeral. Instead of making a public commitment that the president would stay away from any funeral related events out of respect for the grieving family, the government disregarded the family’s wish by drawing up a funeral programme that showed Hichilema as the lead actor at nearly every stage — from receiving the body at the airport to being the first one to view it before any member of the public does so. 

It is worth noting that the death of Lungu is primarily a family issue and the family should have been allowed to have a final say on all matters relating to the disposal of his remains. What the president should have done is to facilitate the wishes of the family to be realised. Lungu’s expressed wish to exclude Hichilema from his funeral bears a striking resemblance to what happened in the United States in 2018 when then Arizona Senator John McCain told his family that he did not want President Donald Trump, with whom he had a turbulent relationship, to attend his funeral when he died. And indeed, when McCain died in August that year, Trump did not attend his funeral out of respect for the McCain family. However, Trump accorded the late senator a state funeral and allowed Vice-president Mike Pence to preside over it. Unless he has undisclosed personal interest in the funeral of his predecessor, Hichilema could have done the same since he loses nothing by staying away. 

I do not understand what is preventing Hichilema from publicly committing that he will be nowhere near the body or the funeral of Lungu, as requested by the deceased through his grieving family. It is bizarre and illogical to force oneself onto a funeral programme where the grieving family has explicitly told you that your presence is unwelcome. If the objective is to accord Lungu a state funeral, the president could have done so without making his presence a precondition for granting that honour to his predecessor. (In Zambia, a state funeral is not a legal requirement or an entitlement; it is an honour accorded by a sitting president, using his or her discretion, to individuals considered worthy of it.) The state is a system, not an individual. 

When Lungu’s family made it clear that his participation was unwelcome, Hichilema should have delegated the responsibility of officiating at the funeral to another official such as Vice-president Mutale Nalumango. By insisting that the task of presiding over the funeral should only be carried out by him and nobody else, the president demonstrated poor judgement. It was his failure to publicly pledge that he would not attend Lungu’s funeral that forced the family to consider burying him outside Zambia. And when he did not get his way on the matter, the president cancelled the national mourning in anger and told Zambians, “Let us move on.” That was unwise.

The fourth missed opportunity was the government’s reaction to the family decision to bury Lungu in South Africa: taking legal action against the family at the eleventh hour to block the funeral that was already under way. I should briefly deviate here to state that I was a regular critic of Lungu’s authoritarian rule to a point where my then employer, the state-run University of Zambia, publicly disowned me in 2021 and only local and international support prevented my arrest on a charge of sedition arising from an opinion piece I had published in this newspaper. Lungu, who only regretted his ill-treatment of me after losing power, incorrectly considered me a “hired gun” of his then main political rival, Hichilema, who, in April 2017, was arrested by police after his convoy failed to give way to Lungu’s motorcade, which was heading to the same event. This incident was inflated into a treason charge and Hichilema was to spend the next four months in detention until local pressure, combined with the opportunistic intervention of the Commonwealth, secured his release before trial commenced. 

When I met Lungu two weeks before he died as part of my research into the book I am writing on why presidents fail, I told him that his downfall started the day he arrested Hichilema for alleged treason over what a dispassionate observer may have regarded as a possible violation of traffic rules or presidential protocol. The arrest, I added, made people who were not sympathetic to Hichilema’s politics warm up to him. This is because Zambians, at their core, hate abuse of power and injustice, especially the kind that pits a powerful Head of State against the weak or relatively defenceless citizen. I can equally say that a major turning point for Hichilema in relation to how many people view him now was the day he dragged a grieving widow and her inconsolable children to court to stop them from burying their loved one. That was heartless and cruel. 

The fifth missed opportunity happened after the Pretoria High Court made what I consider to be a very defective ruling in favour of the Zambian state when a government minister and other supporters of Hichilema recorded and posted video clips of themselves on social media wildly celebrating and singing akatumbi kaleisa (the corpse is coming home). Others added “we have defeated Lungu even in death” and “even in death, he prefers to be frozen in foreign Land than to be buried by Hichilema”. This was vile, cold, and disgusting. Hichilema could have easily and strongly condemned such extremely insensitive remarks and reined in on his supporters who continue to constantly vilify a grieving family. The president could have said “This is not right. That is not who we are as a people. If you are supporting me, you must show empathy to the grieving family because they are the ones who have lost more than any of us.” Instead, he kept quiet. 

Hichilema regularly boasts that he spends time on social media scanning what people say, so it is not like he has not seen the attacks on the Lungus. He has. His silence suggests approval of the conduct of his minister and supporters and constitutes a tragic failure of leadership in a time of sorrow. When one reads the many insults hurled at the Lungu family on rogue social media pages aligned to the ruling party and State House, it is easy to shed tears of empathy for the grieving family. These are people who have not even buried their loved one. Whatever we think about Lungu and how he led Zambia, we must never lose our humanity especially in moments of sadness. 

Overall, the feud between Hichilema and the family of his late main political rival over funeral plans could have been better managed. If Hichilema cannot manage a funeral, how can he manage a country? 

How have Zambians, of different political persuasions and in different parts of the country, reacted to this dispute? Has the funeral dispute exacerbated the country’s regional and political polarisation? 

To be clear, the fault lines have always been there, but the dispute over Lungu’s burial place has exacerbated the country’s political and regional polarisation. Politically, a careful reading of the main media platforms indicates that Lungu’s supporters and PF officials, particularly those based in Zambia, have been largely muted in their response to the undignified row between the family and the government. This might be because they live in fear of the repressive laws that Hichilema has either enacted or dusted off from colonial times to police free speech. It is therefore difficult to accurately read what Zambians truly thinks about the issue because of this general climate of fear that the government has instilled in the population. 

In contrast, officials and supporters of the governing party have been largely unrestrained and vocal in vilifying Lungu and his grieving family, even in death. This includes the attorney general Mulilo Kabesha, who recently stated that the government is prepared to bury Lungu without the involvement of his family if the family boycotted the funeral should the South African courts ultimately decide in favour of the Zambian state. Such reckless statements are culturally insensitive, undermine the government’s claims that its actions are motivated by the desire to accord Lungu a dignified burial, and indicate that political considerations rather than public interest are the key drivers at play. Altogether, they have heightened the political divisions that already existed. How can a funeral be dignified if it excludes the mourning family? In Zambia, there is no law that gives the government primary responsibility for burying a dead person except in the cases of unclaimed bodies, but even in such instances, there is a legal process that must be followed.  

The dispute has also intensified regional divisions. Even before Lungu’s death, there existed sharp national divisions expressed on regional political lines, with many feeling that Hichilema has targeted for prosecution, ill-treated, and marginalised people from regions that previously voted for Lungu such as Eastern, Luapula, Muchinga and Northern provinces. The fact that Lungu managed to hold on to his support base after losing power in 2021 meant that his death was always going to be a polarising moment. Historically, funerals of former presidents in Zambia have served as rare moments of national unity presided over by the incumbent president. The difference this time is that Lungu, at the time of his death, was back in active politics, had a turbulent relationship with his successor, and, partly because of that poor relationship, had made it clear that in the event of his death, he did not want his successor anywhere near his funeral. 

Unfortunately, Hichilema seems to think that staying away from his predecessor’s funeral would diminish his personal standing, deny him the opportunity to show care for Lungu in death that he did not show in life, and allow his rivals to use the funeral for political campaigns ahead of the general election next year. Based on social media discussions, it becomes apparent that those who support the government’s position in the continuing row over Lungu’s burial are mainly Zambians from regions that have historically voted for Hichilema, while areas that supported Lungu are largely expressing themselves through conspicuous silence. This context, alongside the extraordinary desperation shown by the government to grab the body of Lungu from the grieving family, all in the name of giving him what they term a “dignified funeral”, shows how the extended dispute over his burial has reinforced pre-existing regional political divisions. 

The attorney general (AG) said in June that a state funeral is required for presidents by law, citing a court case regarding the burial of former president Kenneth Kaunda. Do you believe the AG is incorrect in his assessment of the law? 

The attorney general’s assessment of the law is incorrect because the Kaunda case never resolved the question of who, between the family of the deceased and the state, holds the ultimate say on the funeral of a late former president. The genesis of the Kaunda case was the decision by the Lungu administration to bury  Kaunda at Embassy Park in Lusaka against his wishes, left to his family, that he be buried next to his late wife at their family farm when he dies. In response to this decision, the Kaunda family filed an urgent application in the high court seeking leave to commence judicial review against the state over the specified decision. The family correctly argued that every decision that the state makes must be governed by law, and that since there is no law that obliges the government to bury the remains of a former president at Embassy Park, the decision must be declared null and void for want of authority. They also asked the court to order the state to release the remains of Kaunda, who died in a government hospital in Lusaka, so that he could be buried in accordance with his wishes. The Kaunda family further requested the court to suspend the government’s decision to bury him until after hearing the arguments from both sides in the main matter. 

Unfortunately, the high court judge who was allocated the case, Wilfred Muma, sat on the urgent application until after the burial took place on 7 July. Following the burial, Muma ruled that he was not persuaded that the family had a good case and thus refused to grant them permission to commence judicial review against the state, who did not even bother to appear before him. Although Muma gave the family leave to appeal against his decision, the family chose not to, as doing so would have been an academic exercise since the action they sought to prevent — the burial of Kaunda in a place that disregarded his wishes — had already taken place. Since the courts never examined the merits of the decision that the government had taken, this outcome meant that there was no judgment in the Kaunda case that could serve as a precedent. All that the Kaunda family did was simply ask for permission to review the decision of the government so that the question of who has ultimate responsibility over the body and funeral of a former president could be ventilated upon in court. A judicial review of the government’s decision would have resulted in it either being set aside or upheld. So, there is no case law on this point. 

Also, there is also no written law in Zambia that empowers the government to conduct the funeral of a former president. This explains why the attorney general, even in court, has not cited any statute which gives the government the authority over a former president’s body and funeral. What presently exists in Zambia is customary law, which is recognised by the country’s constitution. Article 7 of the Constitution of Zambia defines the “Laws of Zambia” to include “This Constitution; laws enacted by parliament; statutory instruments; Zambian customary law which is consistent with the Constitution; and the laws and statutes which apply or extend to Zambia as prescribed.” This means that in the absence of a statute that provides for the funeral of a former president, the death and burial of a former president is subject to customary law. Under customary law, the body of the deceased belongs to the family, and it is the family that has the ultimate responsibility to decide what to do with it, including where to bury. That is part of the many reasons why I find the judgment of the high court in Pretoria on the Lungu case to be a scandal, given that the South African judges relied on the Kaunda case and chose to enforce purported Zambian law without independent witness testimony from a professional expert of the laws of Zambia. 

What effect could this dispute have on the 2026 elections? 

Whatever way the dispute is resolved, it will have a significant bearing on the 2026 elections. The governing party understands this point very well. A key reason behind the government’s court action in South Africa is to reduce the political costs of burying Lungu in exile. If the former president is interred in South Africa, the issue of Lungu’s burial location is likely to feature prominently in the political campaigns ahead of the country’s general election next year. Hichilema’s rivals could promise voters that they would exhume Lungu’s remains and bring them to Zambia for reburial if the person who made it impossible for the former president to be buried at home was voted out. By initiating the court action, Hichilema is probably hoping that he could undermine the effectiveness of such political messages by claiming that he tried all that he could do to bring Lungu’s remains to Zambia and was only prevented by the South African courts. If the court action succeeds, Hichilema, whose administration violated Lungu’s right to travel abroad for medical treatment and the logical outcome is what has happened (death), can try to cleanse himself by showing care for him in death that he did not show when Lungu was alive.

Sishuwa Sishuwa is a Zambian historian and a senior lecturer in the department of history at Stellenbosch University.