A COURT RULING DOES NOT ERASE A NATION’S RIGHT TO HONOUR ITS FORMER PRESIDENT
By Chilufya Kasonde
The Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa has spoken. And Makebi Zulu, Spokesperson for the late former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s family, has wasted no time in declaring that “justice has prevailed.”
But has it?
Let us be clear: this is not a question of whether the South African court acted within its jurisdiction or whether its legal reasoning was sound. The court applied South African law to a dispute unfolding on South African soil, and it found, as courts are entitled to do, that the family’s constitutional rights to dignity, privacy and family autonomy outweighed the Zambian government’s claim. The judgment is legally binding in South Africa, and the Zambian government must respect that.
However, respect for a judicial ruling does not require us to accept Mr. Zulu’s self-serving narrative that this outcome represents some grand “vindication of the rule of law, constitutionalism, and the fundamental principles of human dignity.” A foreign court’s decision in a foreign jurisdiction, however correct under that jurisdiction’s laws, cannot be equated with moral or national justice for the Zambian people.
The Nation Has a Stake
Mr Zulu speaks of “family autonomy” and the “expressed wishes of the deceased” as if these are the only values at play. But a former Head of State is not a private citizen. The Presidency is a public trust, and those who occupy it become symbols of national unity, history and identity. When a former President passes, the nation mourns. The nation has a right to honour its leaders. The nation has a right to bury its own.
The Zambian government’s position has been consistent and principled: as a former Head of State, President Lungu should be accorded a state funeral and laid to rest alongside his predecessors at Embassy Park in Lusaka. This is not, as Mr. Zulu would have us believe, an act of political opportunism. It is an expression of national tradition and respect for the office Lungu once held.
A Deathbed Grudge Cannot Override National Honour
The court’s judgment noted that Lungu “viewed himself to be persona non grata in his own country” and did not want his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema, anywhere near his body or funeral. These were deeply personal sentiments, borne, as the court itself acknowledged, of a bitter political rivalry that defined Zambian politics for years.
But must a nation’s funeral rites be held hostage to a dying man’s political grievances?
A state funeral is not about the current president. It is about the institution of the Presidency. It is about the Zambian people paying their respects to a man who once led them. To insist that a former president be buried in a foreign country, depriving the Zambian people of the opportunity to honour him, depriving his party members of closure, depriving his homeland of his remains, all because of a personal feud with his successor, is an act of breathtaking selfishness disguised as filial piety.
The Family’s “Wishes” Are Not Above Scrutiny
Mr. Zulu declares that “no individual or institution is above the law.” He is correct. But neither is any family above the national interest. The Lungu family has pursued this litigation relentlessly, at great legal cost and emotional toll, all to ensure that a former president of Zambia is laid to rest not in his own country but in a foreign land.
One must ask: whose interests are truly being served here?
The family claims to be “honouring the memory, dignity, and wishes of the late President.” But honouring a leader’s memory does not require burying him in isolation from the people he served. Dignity does not require denying a nation its final farewell. And wishes, however strongly expressed, must sometimes yield to the greater good of national unity and reconciliation.
A Dangerous Precedent
This ruling sets a troubling precedent. If a former head of state can be buried outside his country of origin based on personal animosities, what stops others from making similar claims? What becomes of national sovereignty over the remains of its own leaders? The South African court found that the Zambian government failed to establish a legal basis under South African law to override the family’s wishes. That is a finding about South African law, not a moral endorsement of the family’s position.
We respect the South African court’s ruling. We accept that the Lungu family has won this legal battle. But we do not accept Mr Zulu’s triumphalism. We do not accept that “justice has prevailed” when a Zambian president, a man who once led this nation, will now be buried far from the soil he governed, far from the people who elected him, far from the country that was his home.
Justice, Mr. Zulu, is not merely what a court decides. Justice is also what is right for a nation. And it is not right that Zambia should be denied the honour of burying its own.
The family has won its case. But Zambia has lost something far greater.