Riyaz Patel
Robert Mugabe will be buried “sometime next week,” a family spokesman said Thursday, refusing to give details, though, on where Zimbabwe’s former president would be laid to rest.
This, amid disagreement between his family and government over the funeral plans for Zimbabwe’s founding president.
Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years until he was ousted by his own army and former loyalists in 2017, died in a Singapore hospital six days ago.
He was 95.
His body arrived in Zimbabwe from Singapore Wednesday, received by thousands who had flocked to the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.
The body of the late former President Mugabe is now lying in state at the Rufaro Stadium in Harare where the public and supporters are paying their last respects to their late leader.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling ZANU-PF party want Mugabe buried at a national monument to heroes of the liberation war against the white minority Rhodesian regime.
The government had planned for a state funeral Saturday and the burial on Sunday.
But some of Mugabe’s relatives have dismissed that plan, sharing Mugabe’s bitterness at the way former allies, including Mnangagwa, conspired to topple him and want him buried in his home village.
Leo Mugabe, the late president’s nephew, told Reuters the burial ceremony would be private, without saying where it would be.
“If I tell you that it won’t be private,” he said.
The family later issued a statement saying it was concerned about the manner in which the government was preparing the programme for Mugabe’s funeral “without consulting his immediate family,” Reuters reported.
The family “also observed with shock that the Government of Zimbabwe is attempting to coerce us to accept a programme for funeral and burial” which was contrary to Mugabe’s wishes, the statement added.
