Zambia’s presidential feud that even death couldn’t end

The staff became very political in Zambia.

The mourning and the accumulation of funeral are never an easy moment, but throw the fallout from a longtime quarrel between the two best politicians in the country – President Hakande Hichilema and his predecessor now lifted Edgar Lungu – and you have an explosive mixture.

The animosity was such that Lungu’s family said that one of his dying wishes was that Hichilema does not approach his body.

The row extended the government plans to honor the former head of state, created a painful fracture in the country and let people wonder how things went wrong.

Sunday was supposed to see the funeral of the state for the 68 -year -old man who governed for six years from 2015. But there will be no visiting dignitaries and the place – a huge conference center in the heart of the capital, Lusaka – will be empty.

There was already a suspicion of possible problems to come immediately after Lungu’s death on June 5, in the Video message shared by her daughter on Facebook.

Dressed in a thick black jacket and tears, Tasila Lungu said that her father died in a South African hospital where he was treated with “dignity and intimacy”.

She completed the announcement of a minute saying that “at the moment of sorrow, we invoke the spirit of” One Zambia, One Nation “- the timeless belief that guided the service of President Lungu to our country”.

Highlighting the need for unity at a time when tradition suggested that the nation should naturally come together was an index that everything was going well.

And there was another problem: where was the president’s announcement?

The statement of Ms. Lungu confirmed rumors on the social networks of her father’s death, messages of condolence were already sent, including the president of Kenya, but there was no word of Hichilema.

While independent points of sale reported the news, the national diffuser, ZNBC, remained silent.

Then, three hours after the girl’s post, The head of state of Zambia shared his thoughts In a text publication on Facebook. He launched his own call to unity, asking people to “maintain the values ​​of peace, dignity and conviviality which define us as Zambians”.

Information Minister Cornelius Mweetwa rejected concerns about Hichilema speaking of death. He told the BBC that, on the basis of the previous one, it was not the role of head of state to be the first to announce the death of a predecessor.

Nevertheless, the supporters of Lungu considered that Hichilema’s message of “conviviality” sounded hollow.

Hichilema finally became president of his sixth attempt after beating Lungu in the polls in 2021. It was their third electoral game, but enmity went beyond the bubble rivalry at the bubble.

The key to understanding this was the more than 100 days than Hichilema, head of the opposition at the time, went into detention in 2017, awaiting the betrayal trial.

He was accused of having endangered the life of Lungu then president of the time after his procession refused to give way to the one who transported the head of state.

The accusations were only abandoned after the intervention of the Commonwealth Secretary General.

Later that year, Bbc that it had been held in cell isolation during the first eight days in degrading and inhuman conditions “without electricity, without water, without toilets”. He blamed Lungu personally for his imprisonment.

It was only one of the 17 occasions that Hichilema was arrested. Supporters of his united party for national development were also harassed by the supporters of the Patriotic Manager Front (PF).

The 2021 election could have drawn a line under things.

LUNGU, who had been rejected by a margin of nearly a million votes by an electorate in hammer the allegations of corruption and the concerns concerning an apparent anti-democratic behavior, has retired.

But as the disillusionment with the presidency of Hichilema increased due to continuous economic difficulties, Lungu felt an opportunity and announced in October 2023 that he returned to the front line policy.

Shortly after this announcement, Lungu was stripped of his retirement services and his privileges by the State when he had returned to active policy.

This decision rushed to the former president and his family.

Lungu also complained about police harassment. At one point last year, he said he was “practically under house arrest”.

In 2023, the police warned him not to jog in public, describing his weekly training as “political activism”.

“I cannot leave my home without being accosted and disputed by the police and bringing me home,” Lungu told the BBC in May 2024.

In this interviewHe also alleged that it had been forbidden to attend a conference abroad and to travel abroad for medical treatment.

The Minister of Information vehemently denied that there was a ban on travel and described the idea that his movement was limited in Zambia as a “fiction and a fruit of the imagination of politically loaded mentalities”.

Mweetwa added that despite the treatment of Hichilema when he was in opposition, he was determined not to do the same in Lungu.

There are also accusations that the president’s anti-corruption crusade has targeted people close to the former governing PF, including Lungu’s family.

His widow, who continues to be the subject of an investigation, has been brought to justice and has lost properties. Some of her children, including Tasila, have also experienced similar treatment – they all deny reprehensible acts.

Then, at the end of last year, the Constitutional Court prevented him from presenting himself again for the president, judging that he had already served as much as possible of two mandates authorized by law.

The former head of state was angry with the way he felt that he had been treated.

“There was no love between the two men and [Lungu] was of the opinion: “I do not want people to claim in my death that they cared about me when in fact, not,” said the lawyer for the Makebi Zulu family.

Lungu finally managed to go to South Africa in January, but Zulu said that he had been informed by his doctors, after a series of tests, that he had done a check earlier, the treatment would have been more likely.

He was not revealed what he was suffering.

It is, in part, in the light of this that Lungu said that he “would not want the current president to attend his funeral”.

The government rejected the idea that Lungu was prevented from going to see his doctors in South Africa.

After his death, the family wanted to be in charge of funeral arrangements, but the Zambian authorities sought to take control.

Despite the Malks, last weekend, it seemed that a compromise had been reached and plans were made for state funerals.

But relations have once again broken when the family said that the government had denied the agreement after having published a program showing more involvement by Hichilema than what had been planned.

In a message ThursdayThe president thanked the Zambians for their “resilience, patience, solidarity and calm during this period”, but after doing “everything that is possible to hire the family … We have reached a point where a clear decision must be taken”.

With this, the funeral arrangements in Zambia were suspended and the national mourning period was abruptly shortened.

Burial should now take place in South Africa and it seems unlikely that Hichilema attended it.

The Zambians hoped that Hichilema and the Lungu bury their differences, but this death and the events that followed denied people the closure and reconciliation they wanted to see between the two.

These differences also refused to several million Zambians the opportunity to cry and pay their last tribute to a man who formerly governed them.