HICHILEMA PREPARED TO STAY AWAY FROM LUNGU FUNERAL, AG TELLS NATION IN LIVE ZNBC ADDRESS

HICHILEMA PREPARED TO STAY AWAY FROM LUNGU FUNERAL, AG TELLS NATION IN LIVE ZNBC ADDRESS

LUSAKA, 25 April — President Hakainde Hichilema is prepared to absent himself from the funeral of his predecessor, the late Edgar Lungu, if his absence will help facilitate a dignified send-off for the former Head of State, the Attorney General of the Republic, Mulilo Kabesha SC, told the nation on Saturday in a live televised address on ZNBC.

The disclosure that the offer to stay away had been communicated to the Lungu family eleven months ago was the most striking moment of an address in which the Attorney General sought to put on the record, in plain terms, what he described as the source of persistent public confusion surrounding the late President’s remains.

“President Hichilema has been consistent throughout: his interest in this matter is constitutional,” the Attorney General said, reading from a prepared statement to camera. “His concern is, and has always been, that his predecessor is accorded the dignity the office demands. The President has made it clear, that if his absence from the funeral will help facilitate a fitting send-off for the former President, he is prepared to stay away. This was communicated to the family eleven months ago.”

The address, broadcast nationally, came less than 48 hours after the late President’s remains were handed to his family in Pretoria, on the back of an urgent High Court order obtained by the family hours before the remains were due to be released to the Zambian State.

Mr Kabesha used the address to set out, point by point, the Government’s position. The remains of the Sixth President, he said, have at no point been in the physical custody of the Government of the Republic of Zambia. They were held throughout by the South African Police Service in connection with an inquest opened after Dr Lungu’s death in Pretoria on 5 June last year — a process the Attorney General described as “a matter for the South African authorities” in which the Zambian Government has had no involvement.

He walked viewers carefully through the legal chronology. On 8 August last year, the High Court of South Africa had ruled that the remains should be released to the Zambian State for burial. The family was granted leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal but, as the Attorney General confirmed, no appeal was filed within the time permitted.

With the 13 April deadline having passed, the Government moved by operation of law to reinstate the August judgment. It was at that point — with release to the State imminent — that the family approached the High Court in Pretoria on an urgent basis and obtained the order under which the remains were handed to them on the evening of Thursday, 23 April.

The Attorney General was firm that Government had respected, and would continue to respect, every order issued by the courts. “That is not a matter of convenience,” he said. “It is a matter of principle.”

But he was equally firm that the matter does not end with Thursday’s order. Dr Lungu, he reminded viewers, served as President for seven years — Head of State, Head of Government, and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces. The duty owed by the Republic to that office, the Attorney General said, “is not extinguished by a single order on custody,” and Government would continue, “through the proper legal channels, and with the patience this matter requires,” to ensure the honours due to a former Head of State are properly discharged. Legal representatives in South Africa, he confirmed, are studying the latest order.

The tone toward the Lungu family was measured. The burial of a former Head of State, the Attorney General said, “was never meant to be a contest, and it need not remain one.” Government’s willingness to engage with the family in good faith to find an arrangement that honours the Sixth President was, he said, “undiminished.”

The address closed on a note of continuity. President Hichilema and his team, the Attorney General said, “remain focused on delivering the mandate given to them by the Zambian people” — a reminder, in a week of legal back-and-forth in Pretoria, that the business of government in Lusaka has continued without interruption.