A ‘Frozen Christmas’ President in Pretoria
…the sad story of the sixth president of Zambia Edgar Lungu
Amb. Anthony Mukwita wrote-
5 Dec 25.
In twenty days, more than one billion Christians across the globe will celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
In Zambia, the only nation on the continent constitutionally declared Christian, jingle bells will ring, Christmas trees will sparkle, and chickens and turkeys will find their way into boiling pots or ovens.
Even the poorest households, scraping by on a dollar a day, will somehow summon the miracle of a chicken stew with curry.
For a moment, the darkness of load shedding will be forgotten, church bells will toll, and prayers will rise in gratitude for life itself.
Yet amid the rice, the chickens, the turkey, the wine and ales, one haunting question hovers like a restless spirit: Is Zambia’s sixth President, Edgar Chagwa Lungu, spending Christmas frozen in a seven foot steel refrigerator in Pretoria at sub-zero temperatures?
Six months have passed since June 5th, the day he breathed his last. Six months of legal wrangling, diplomatic spats, and a widow’s tears.
Six months of a nation watching in disbelief as its former Commander in Chief remains unburied and frozen in state.
If there were a Guinness World Record for “longest unburied president in modern Africa,” Zambia would hold the shameful crown.
Zambia would walk the hall of shame for being heartless according to observers.
ECL’s widow, Esther Lungu, stares into space, her eyes long dried of tears after mourning for half a year. His daughter Tasila Lungu, his grandchildren, his friends—all pray for closure.
But the Attorney General digs in his heels, refusing to allow burial in South Africa as the family wishes. Analysts ask: what would Zambia lose if Lungu were buried in South Africa? Rain? Sunshine? Moonlight? Sleep? The economy is on its knees already. What moral compass guides a nation that denies a family the dignity of laying its patriarch to rest?
In sixty one years, six Zambian presidents have died. None was frozen. None was denied burial. None was left hovering between Pretoria and Lusaka, restless. Frozen, brittle and tired.
And so Zambia mourns. The world watches with awe and surprise. “Where are you from?” someone asks. “Zambia–the country where a president has not been buried yet.”
The irony is cruel. Had he not died of a heart condition, Edgar Lungu would have celebrated his 69th birthday on November 11th, dancing his awkward funky chicken with family and friends. Instead, his spirit waits, trapped between steel and silence. His birthday too was in a fridge.
Christmas is about love, forgiveness, and unity. It is about the birth of the Son of God who sacrificed His life for humanity. As the Bible reminds us: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9).
Is it not time, then, for Zambia to be a peacemaker? To compromise? To let a family bury its father, grandfather, and husband? To let a nation heal?
The satire writes itself: a government that once sacrificed to free colonized neighbours now fails to free its own leader’s body. A country that built bridges, roads, and schools now builds only a bridge of shame between Pretoria and Lusaka.
And yet, amid sorrow, hope flickers. Perhaps between today and Christmas, Edgar Lungu may “rise from the fridge like Jesus” and be allowed burial at last. Perhaps Zambia will rediscover its huge heart, the one that once defined it.
As the French say: “La douleur passe, mais la beauté demeure”–pain passes, but beauty remains.
Apart from divine intervention, whom else can grieving Zambians turn to in order to plug this half year long black hole in their hearts, this hollow space and pain?
Who in the leadership will say, “Enough of this…let my man rest.”
Let us choose beauty. Let us choose unity. Let us let Edgar Chagwa Lungu rest.
—-
Credit: Amb. Anthony Mukwita, Author & International Relations Analyst. Author of “Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s Rough Journey to State House.”
A frozen piece of sh1t
An idiot that fails to call a shape by its rightful name, Anthony as long as you don’t point cause of this delayed burial that man ll freeze to pieces. The presidents you have mentioned herein were all buried by Zambian under Zambian military ceremonies overseen by the sitting commander in chief
A live bustard ati he is frozen. Bo chap wake up. This is what plan B meant ba Bastard.
UPND are truly vile. They are very unZambian in their language. They are all psychopaths like their ka leader, lacking empathy. We never should have voted for these Freemason devil worshippers.
VOTE FOR CHANGE IN 2026.
PF criminals at highest speed on how to preach hatrages as results made ecl not to buried soon something fishing from the family.
Anthony, a faint memory of an incident at the Kabulonga Boys School grounds some years back brings pain to the family that lost a loved family member with each year that goes by. To realize that the alleged assailant walks the streets of Lusaka freely is even more painful.
Gentile the IBA former Director’s Death at the hands of a young Brother of one prominent lawyer is yet another one that just brings so much pain, small children orphaned at a tender age, their future plunged into uncertainties, yet the assailant is receiving bread and butter with every visit he receives from his relatives, with the possibility that one day his brother may be in a position to put him back on the streets of Lusaka and even be rewarded for successfully preventing the exposure of a stinking scandle at IBA.
A very promising youngster’s life with a very bright future was suddenly terminated at the University of Zambia was terminated just like that, and the assailant is walking the streets very freely. There are many more painful examples like the gassing that took so many lives away just because someone wanted to place a case of treason on HH at that time.
Now, these events have so easily been put at the back of the majority’s minds because they were ordinarily not so much of public significance as that of the former head of state’s body.
So much mystery surrounds this issue because a lot of questions are being asked as to why no one has ever been allowed to see the remains of the person claimed to have died.
The government can not allow the property of government to be erased from the Zambian Register of Citizens without verifying that the person is really dead.
The government has a duty to bury it’s former head of state at the designated place of his burial, the embassy park.
The person was a very bitter individual who confessed to being on the path of Plan B. One that confessed at a church gathering that he had personalities of a dove when he wanted to deceive the public that he was a symbol of peace and love and a serpant when he wanted to strike. That is not the kind of person you would simply bury like a still born!
He must be accounted for and the security of this country must be guaranteed.
To try and put the blame of failure to bury him on HH is simply nothing but a futile attempt to get the Zambian people to hate him.
It is the government legacy to bury former heads of state at embassy park and this strange behavior of holding on to a “corpse” for political campaign has been tolerated beyond understanding.
It is scandalous and a scheme authored by a group of people with a record of disregarding what is perceived as a normal way of doing things.
This is deeper than witchcraft indeed.