By TheSpy
Imagine a former president lying in a foreign mortuary for more than a year not because of a criminal investigation, a medical mystery, or a dispute over finances, but because politics refused to let go.
That is the extraordinary story of Zambia’s sixth president, Edgar Chagwa Lungu, who died in South Africa on June 5, 2025. For 12 months, his remains became the subject of a bitter legal and political struggle between his family and the government of the country he once led. The impasse finally ended on June 23, 2026, when South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the wishes of Lungu’s family outweighed the Zambian government’s claim to direct his burial.
The judgment brought an end to one of the most unusual post-presidential disputes in modern African politics. Yet the case leaves behind difficult questions about power, reconciliation, dignity, and the limits of state authority.
To understand how Zambia arrived at this moment, one must revisit the troubled relationship between Edgar Lungu and his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema.
Their rivalry was never merely political. During Lungu’s presidency, Hichilema, then opposition leader, faced repeated confrontations with the state. The most dramatic occurred in 2017 when he spent four months in prison on treason charges after a convoy incident involving the presidential motorcade. The episode became a defining symbol of Zambia’s increasingly polarized politics.
When Hichilema won the presidency in 2021, the political landscape shifted dramatically. Investigations into alleged corruption intensified, with members of Lungu’s family coming under scrutiny. Whether justified or politically motivated, the investigations deepened mistrust between the two camps and reinforced perceptions that the rivalry had become deeply personal.
According to family members, Lungu’s final wish before travelling to South Africa for medical treatment was clear: should he die, President Hichilema and his administration were not to play any role in his funeral arrangements.
When Lungu succumbed to heart complications, his family sought to honour that request by arranging a private burial in South Africa. The Zambian government disagreed.
From the government’s perspective, this was not merely a family matter. State funerals carry profound symbolic importance across Africa. They are moments when nations honour public service, celebrate continuity, and demonstrate political maturity. Burying Lungu alongside Zambia’s other former heads of state at Embassy Park would have projected a message of national unity despite years of political conflict.
The family, however, saw the matter differently. For them, the issue was not state protocol but respect for the deceased’s wishes and the family’s right to grieve without political interference.
What followed was a legal battle that neither side could truly win.
President Hichilema repeatedly expressed a desire for Lungu to be buried in Zambia with full state honours. In ending the official mourning period on June 19, 2025, he argued that the nation could not remain indefinitely suspended in mourning and maintained that government channels remained open for dialogue. Government officials insisted that their actions were motivated by national tradition and constitutional responsibility rather than political considerations.
Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha became the government’s principal legal voice throughout the dispute. Even after the Supreme Court of Appeal ultimately ruled in favour of the family, Kabesha announced that Zambia would respect the judgment and would not pursue further appeals, bringing the long-running standoff to a close.
The human cost of the dispute, however, is impossible to ignore.
For an entire year, a widow mourned while court papers moved between lawyers. A family sought closure while political arguments continued. A former president remained unburied in a foreign country as legal principles collided with personal grief.
The tragedy is that this outcome was not inevitable.
A more mature political culture might have prevented relations between the two leaders from deteriorating so profoundly. Strong institutions, trusted mediators, and credible mechanisms for managing political transitions could have reduced the bitterness that eventually spilled over into funeral arrangements. Even after Lungu’s death, greater flexibility and empathy from all sides may have created space for compromise.
Instead, a deeply personal dispute became a matter of national and international litigation.
The entire episode underscores the enduring relevance of Ubuntu—the African philosophy that places human dignity, compassion, and shared humanity at the centre of public life.
Ubuntu teaches that our humanity is bound together. It reminds us that political opponents remain human beings, that grief deserves respect, and that death should be a moment for healing rather than further division.
When a former head of state remains unburied for 365 days because political differences cannot be resolved, Ubuntu is diminished. When a grieving family and a government become adversaries in foreign courtrooms, something larger than a legal dispute is at stake.
There is also a painful lesson here for Pan-Africanism.
For generations, African leaders have spoken about unity, solidarity, and the breaking down of borders. Yet one of Zambia’s former presidents will now be laid to rest outside the country he once governed because the divisions at home proved too deep to bridge.
That reality should trouble all who believe in African unity.
Pan-Africanism cannot exist only in summit declarations and ceremonial speeches. It must be reflected in political cultures that encourage reconciliation, peaceful transitions of power, and respect for the dignity of both former leaders and their families.
The Lungu burial dispute should serve as a cautionary tale for governments across the continent. Political competition is inevitable in a democracy. Personal vendettas are not. Institutions must be strong enough to prevent political rivalries from following leaders beyond office—and beyond death itself.
Power is temporary. Political office is temporary. Even the fiercest rivalries eventually fade.
What remains is how we treated one another when it mattered most.
The ultimate measure of leadership is not winning the final argument. It is preserving the final dignity.
May Zambia, and indeed Africa, draw wisdom from this painful chapter. Let our institutions be guided by law, but let our politics be tempered by compassion. For without Ubuntu, power becomes an end in itself. With Ubuntu, even our deepest divisions can find healing.
And in the end, healing is what nations need far more than victory.
