TWO months after former president Edgar Lungu died in South Africa, his body remains unburied.
But that may change in a matter of hours.
The Pretoria High Court is this morning expected to hand down its ruling at 11:30 hours in open court, finally bringing clarity to the legal dispute between Lungu’s family and the Zambian government over where the late national leader should be buried.
Should Lungu be flown back to Zambia for a state funeral or should he be buried privately in South Africa, as his family insists he wanted?
Government says Zambia is his home and the law is clear that sitting and former presidents are to be accorded official state funerals and laid to rest at Embassy Park.
But Lungu’s widow, Esther, his children and other close relatives want to keep his remains in South Africa.
They argue that the former president, who died on June 5, expressed discomfort with President Hakainde Hichilema’s involvement in his funeral and would have preferred to be laid to rest away from a government they claim abandoned him in his final years.
The family’s legal team, led by Casper Welgemoed, told the court on Monday that Lungu explicitly said via a podcast recording that he did not want President Hichilema anywhere near his casket or funeral service.
But the court questioned whether there was any written evidence of Lungu’s wish to be buried in South Africa and challenged the legality of a foreign court barring a sitting president from attending a State funeral in his own country.
The Pretoria High Court had earlier declined to stop Hichilema from participating in Lungu’s funeral, advising the family that such an order could only be sought in Zambia after repatriation.
Even so, Lungu’s family insists they feel unsafe returning to Zambia and claim they have already spent considerable sums preparing for a burial in South Africa, which was abruptly halted when the Zambian government obtained an urgent interdict to stop the funeral.
The government, through Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha, maintains that the state is not only constitutionally obligated to bury its former heads of State but that denying Lungu a State Funeral would dishonour both his legacy and the presidency itself.
By Catherine Pule in Pretoria
Kalemba, August 8, 2025
