A furious row is raging over whether the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema, will preside over the funeral of his predecessor, Edgar Lungu, as the former president’s family wage a legal battle in South Africa to try to prevent his body from being repatriated.
The legal fight marks the latest twist in a feud between the two men that goes back at least a decade and has now outlasted the former president, who died in South Africa in June aged 68 while being treated for an undisclosed illness.
Mourners had already arrived for a funeral in Johannesburg in June when it was halted by a high court judge after an 11th-hour request by Zambia’s attorney general, Mulilo Kabesha. Lungu’s family said he had specifically requested that Hichilema not attend his funeral.
On 8 August, the Pretoria high court ruled that Lungu’s body could be sent back to Zambia for a state funeral. Lungu’s older sister Bertha broke down, shouting across the courtroom at Kabesha as she was restrained by other relatives.
Lungu’s family then applied for leave to appeal. On Monday, the high court adjourned the case indefinitely while South Africa’s constitutional court decides whether to hear the appeal.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories have spread, from rumours that Lungu is not actually dead to speculation that Hichilema wants to use the body for witchcraft.
Many Zambians have joked about the saga. “It’s coming home!” Kodwani Banda, a self-described “youth advocate”, posted to his 356,000 Facebook followers, with an image of white smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel chimney.
Emmanuel Mwamba, a spokesperson for the Patriotic Front, Lungu’s party, said: “There should have been more sympathy. When [government officials] came to South Africa, they were just interested in picking up the body and holding the funeral. It was very mechanical. Their approach lacked sympathy, lacked empathy, lacked a sense of Africanness, a sense of ubuntu.”
Kabesha had previously argued that a state funeral with full military honours was a legal requirement, citing a court ruling on the burial of Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda. “The moment that a national mourning is declared, the law kicks in,” he told the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation in June.
Mwamba responded that a state funeral could be held without the current president presiding over it. “His presence doesn’t make it. A state funeral is, in fact, the protocols such as the gun salute, the pallbearers being soldiers, the ceremony being handled by the defence forces,” he said.
Sishuwa Sishuwa, a political historian and senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University, said the burial dispute had heightened political discord in Zambia.
“The faultlines have always been there, but the dispute over Lungu’s burial place has exacerbated the country’s regional and political polarisation,” he said. “Whatever way the dispute is resolved, it will have a significant bearing on the 2026 elections … A key reason behind the government’s court action in South Africa is to reduce the political costs of burying Lungu in exile.”
Lungu ruled Zambia from 2015 to 2021, having taken over when Michael Sata died in office. He defeated Hichilema in the 2016 presidential election, which Hichilema and his United Party for National Development (UPND) party claimed was rigged.
The following year, Hichilema was sent to prison to await trial on treason charges after his convoy did not give way to Lungu’s presidential motorcade. Four months later, after an international outcry, he was released and the charges were dropped.
Hichilema finally defeated Lungu in the 2021 elections, amid an economic crisis. Since then, he has been accused of using oppressive methods similar to those of his longtime rival.
In 2023, police stopped Lungu from going out for runs, saying they were “political activism” that had to be approved in advance to “ensure public safety”. His wife and children have faced corruption charges, which they have denied and said were politically motivated.
In 2024, Lungu was banned from running in next year’s presidential election by the constitutional court, which ruled that the period from when Lungu took office in 2015 until the 2016 election counted as a full first term.
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