Mugabe’s body is returned amid row over where to bury him
The former president of Zimbabwe could be laid to rest in official cemetery against his will, say family
ROBERT MUGABE’S body was repatriated from Singapore to Zimbabwe yesterday as his family said they were still unsure where he would be buried.
Thousands of people gathered to watch as the plane carrying his remains landed at Harare’s international airport, which bears his name. The coffin was accompanied by Grace Mugabe, the former president’s widow, who had been living in Singapore with her husband since April.
Mugabe’s body will lie in state in Harare and at his home village in Zvimba before a funeral ceremony attended by international dignitaries at the capital’s main sports stadium, planned for Saturday. But an acrimonious row over his final resting place is yet to be resolved, fuelling rumours in the Zimbabwean capital that the ceremony may be postponed.
“I don’t yet know whether he will be buried at home, at the village or what,” said Leo Mugabe, the former president’s eldest nephew. “I am the family spokesman and I hope to soon find out.”
The Zimbabwean government wants Mugabe laid to rest at Heroes Acre, a cemetery set aside for national dignitaries in west Harare, where a plot for the late president is already marked out alongside the grave of his first wife, Sally.
But some of Mugabe’s family say he did not want to be buried there after he was deposed in a coup in 2017, and asked instead to be buried alongside his mother in Zvimba, his home village, 50 miles north west of Harare. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the president and former lieutenant of Mugabe who ousted him in the 2017 coup, held inconclusive talks with tribal chiefs to break the deadlock on Tuesday. A source close to the Zimbabwean government said yesterday that arrangements had already been made for a Heroes Acre burial and it was unthinkable that the founder of the ruling Zanu-pf party could be buried anywhere else. “He doesn’t belong to the family. He belongs to the party,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The wrangling is widely seen as an extension of the bitter factional feud between Mrs Mugabe and Mr Mnangagwa that led to Mugabe’s downfall. Jonathan Moyo, a former minister and ally of Mrs Mugabe who has been in exile since Mugabe was deposed, claimed the president had tried to bribe chiefs with bundles of cash and promises of expensive cars but offered no evidence to back up the claim.
Violet Gomba, a Zimbabwean journalist who has lived in exile in Britain for several years after facing threats
‘It’s only fitting that he should join his comrades at a Zanu graveyard’
from the Mugabe regime, said it would be fitting if he were laid to rest in the official cemetery against his will.
“He was the architect of Heroes Acre. It’s only fitting that he should join his fellow comrades at what many now describe as a Zanu graveyard,” she said. “It was good enough for those he got to be buried there, why shouldn’t it be good enough for him to be buried there?”