JOHANNESBURG – A 11-month political and legal standoff over the final resting place of former Zambian President Edgar Lungu took a new turn this week, as the Zambian government announced it has taken physical custody of Lungu’s body from his family, following a ruling from a South African court. Lungu, who led Zambia from 2015 to 2021, passed away at the age of 68 on June 5 last year at a South African hospital from an undisclosed illness, and his remains have been trapped in legal limbo ever since.
In an official statement released Wednesday, Zambia’s attorney general confirmed that the South African court ordered the release of Lungu’s remains to Zambian authorities. Following the ruling, the body was transferred from a Pretoria funeral home — where it had been held since Lungu’s death — to an alternate undisclosed facility in South Africa. However, the Lungu family maintains that a separate urgent court ruling ordered the body to be returned to the original Pretoria funeral home, leaving the situation muddled by two apparently conflicting judicial orders. As of Wednesday evening, full details of both rulings had not been made public.
The bitter dispute over Lungu’s burial is rooted in years of deep political enmity between Lungu and current Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, who defeated Lungu in the 2021 national presidential election. The Hichilema administration has pushed for Lungu to receive an official state funeral on Zambian soil, with interment at a national cemetery reserved exclusively for former heads of state. But Lungu’s family has pushed back against this plan, saying one of the former president’s final wishes was that Hichilema should be barred from attending his funeral or having any involvement in his burial arrangements.
This is not the first time the conflict has disrupted proceedings for Lungu. Just weeks after his death, the Zambian government obtained a court order to halt Lungu’s funeral service mid-ceremony in South Africa, forcing grieving family members to leave the church and rush to a courthouse to address the legal dispute.
The political rift between the two leaders stretches back years before the 2021 election. In 2017, when Lungu was still president, Hichilema was arrested on treason charges and held in detention for four months. The charges were ultimately dropped only after widespread international condemnation of the arrest. Following his 2021 election defeat, Lungu claimed that Zambian authorities had placed him under de facto house arrest, restricting his movement to block any attempt at a political comeback. The Hichilema administration has repeatedly denied these allegations.