🇿🇲 EDITOR’S NOTE | So When Was Lungu Supposed To Be Buried?
Former president Edgar Lungu died on June 5, 2025. Today is July 5, 2026. Thirteen months later, Zambia’s sixth president remains unburied.
For one year, the country was told the matter was about dignity, wishes and family rights. We were told the late president had left clear wishes. We were told President Hakainde Hichilema should not be anywhere near his body, his funeral or his burial. We were told the family wanted to bury him outside Zambia, and the government had no right to interfere..
Government fought that position. It prepared Embassy Park. It argued precedent. It said every former president had been buried on Zambian soil with national honours. The matter moved through South African courts until late June, when the South African court ruled in favour of the family’s preferred burial path.
At that point, the argument should have ended.
If the issue was truly the family’s wish, the burial should have proceeded.
It has not.
Instead, Brian Mundubile now tells voters in Chinsali: “When you vote for us and we win, we will honour late President Edgar Lungu and bury him with respect.”
That sentence changes everything.
It raises a hard question. Was this ever only about the wishes of the dead, or has the body of a former president now become part of an election strategy?
Mundubile is not speaking alone. His running mate, Makebi Zulu, is also the Lungu family lawyer. This is not a distant political relationship. The legal and political streams are now touching each other in full public view.
If the family already won the right to bury Lungu in South Africa, why has the burial not happened? If the wish was to avoid Hichilema, that condition has effectively been met. If the wish was burial in South Africa, the court cleared the road. So why is the campaign now saying burial will happen after an opposition victory?
And if Hichilema wins on August 13, then what?
Will Edgar Lungu remain unburied because voters did not choose Tonse? Will the family continue waiting? Will the same people later return to Zambia and ask for national honours after turning the funeral into campaign material?
This is where morality enters.
A family has rights. But a family also has responsibility. No family should allow grief to be dragged this far into partisan politics. No political alliance should reduce the burial of a former head of state to a campaign promise.
Zambia has seen many ugly things in politics. This one sits low. The dead deserve dignity. The living deserve honesty.
And voters deserve to know whether they are being asked to choose a president or vote for a funeral date.
© The People’s Brief | Editor
My is Fred Mmembe not talking about it, wasnt it him who was accusing HH ati leka umunobe atuse, saying all sorts of nasty words towards HH. The whole bunch of opposition are quiet, the church is quiet, is this the nature of Zambians?
Talk of a dignified burial for the former president, Mr. Lungu, is a myth. There is not a shred of dignity left. His remains are now political election campaign fodder. That is how cheap hus body has become.
And in all this, the family is a willing partner. That is why they made impossible demands and aborted the burial at every turn.
PF destroyed Zambia in every way. What kind of people would use a body as a campaign tool? What else are such people willing to do to regain power and where will they take the country once in power?
And where is the self righteous Rev. Sumaili, the former minister of Religious Affairs? What is her talk on “national values”? Dr. M’membe, why are you silent? The circumstances don’t suit your narrative? What is Archbishop Alick Banda (not the Catholic Church) saying after all the noise he made?
Every piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place, exposing the political scheming behind the protracted burial impasse.
Chapwa nomba, Mundubile has lost it, he is not going anywhere. If you cling on using the dead in order to gain political mileage, even God cannot bless you. These guys have more confidence in the dead than in God. They feel Sata can still help them win, Lungu can help them win, the other day I saw a spiritual picture of Kaunda with a white handkerchief blessing Mundubile. Surely can’t these people look to the living God for blessings? Why are they clinging to the dead as if there is no God in Israel? And you are busy proclaiming on top of the Anthill that Zambia is a Christian nation. Where is their Christianity here? We have now believed that these people were just Christian’s for Lungu and not for Christ. The South African Courts had already given the Lungu family to bury Lungu wherever they wish to bury him, what are they still waiting for? Is Mundubile part of the Lungu family?
