Govt proposed that President Hichilema was to be in the same room with Edgar Lungu’s body, for 40 minutes, Lungu family lawyer tells the South African Supreme Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court today in South Africa heard how Mr Hakainde Hichilema wanted to spend 40 minutes with the b0dy of Edgar Chagwa Lungu without his family at the airport for a private mass with 4 of his people…The Edgar Lungu Family lawyer expressed concerns regarding Mr HH and the UPND government breeching the initial agreement with the family…

The Lungu family lawyer, Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, has argued that the late Lungu had explicitly opposed any involvement by current Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema in his funeral arrangements, citing long-standing personal and political tensions between the two leaders.

Ngcukaitobi further told the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein that the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria erred in finding that the Zambian government had established a clear legal right to repatriate Lungu’s remains.

The case comes as Zambia prepares to mark the first anniversary of Lungu’s death on June 5, with the dispute over where and how he should be laid to rest still unresolved.

Ngcukaitobi says, “on page 187, what we know about Lungu’s own wishes appears at page 187, paragraph 3.34 of the affidavit. He did not want the current President of Zambia, Hichilema, to have anything to do with his body or his funeral.

He told his confidant, Dr. Sachana, who is a lecturer at Stellenbosch University, that he does not wish for Hichilema to have any role in his funeral. That’s largely because by the time Lungu came to SA, there were deep-seated political and personal problems between him and the current government of Zambia”.

He further says. “We also know that the wishes of the widow, Esther Lungu, my client, and the wishes of the children and the immediate family are that Hichilema of Zambia should have nothing to do with the body.

We also know that the family does not want to be dictated to by the Zambian government about where the body ought to be buried. If they elect to bury the body in SA, which is what they intended to do on June 17, 2025, they do not want the Zambian government to interfere with that decision”.

“If they elect to bury the body in Zambia, they also want that decision to be made by them. So the problem with the high court’s decision, the departure problem with the high court’s decision, was that it did not adjudicate the constitutional rights that were pleaded by the family and even its approach to the foreign law discussion was mistaken because it did not do what this court recently held in the MTN case, which is you proceed from the premise of the SA constitution. and we know this was pleaded expressly from page 170 of the pleadings at paragraph 2.3.1,” he adds.

–SABC–