WHAT’S THE MEDAL FOR THE INHUMANE SCANDAL OF KEEPING A FORMER HEAD OF STATE UNBURIED 10 MONTHS ON?
A KBN TV EDITORIAL
All things considered, it would appear that the only crime His Excellency Edgar Chagwa Lungu (ECL) committed, is to make a wish regarding what he considered to be the most dignified way to send him back to his ancestors.
He knew that he would not be around to enforce that wish, it was contingent upon the living to accord him the respect, not of a 21 gun salute because that, he already earned by virtue of the office he held, but to respect his wishes when he can not defend himself.
When you reflect on this bitter and sad tale in our political history, it seems, for expressing his wishes not publicly, but intimately and privately with the closest family inner circle, ECL is being punished in his death so brutally that he is serving a sentence in death of being an unburied prisoner who is still frozen in a foreign land.
Those who have waged a vicious legal battle to claim his body, have done so with impunity as if there is a medal they are fighting for. To stripe him of his wishes in death, is to disrespect him no matter the pomp and parade we want to mount in his honour.
Zambia may just win the worst record in the guinness book of world records as the most cold, callous and inhumane nation that takes away the rights of the expressed wishes of the dead only to assert our own rights and inpute them upon the dead. We are a nation that imprisons its leaders in death!
Honouring the wishes of the dead is not a matter that should be decided by a foreign court, it’s one that must be honoured and respected to the letter. It’s a sacred duty with the weight of an Oath.
When you read the account in Genesis 50:25, before his death, Joseph made the Israelites swear, they made an Oath to take his bones with them when God delivered them from Egypt, refusing to have his body remain in exile.
Lungu too, didn’t want his body to be buried in a foreign land but upon repatriation, his wish should be honoured. To create a hostile environment that armtwists the family to consider the option of putting him to rest elsewhere as the last ditch attempt to honour the Oath they made to him, is an indictment on our nation.
The principle of honouring an Oath you pledged to keep when your loved ones are long gone and dead that they can’t take the stand in court to defend themselves, is a duty you owe to their memories.
The fact that ten months on, we have forgotten that Esther Lungu and her children are humans who should be helped with our collective love to find their feet and move on from the pain of losing their loved one, says alot about who we have become as a people. We are lost and massaging egos for self importance. We don’t care about the feelings of the grieving family, their daily pain for the last ten months doesn’t concern us as long we achieve what we want against all odds.
After all is said and done, it doesn’t matter what you say, Edgar Lungu is a prisoner in death for expressing an intimate wish to his family. He deserves the honours due to him because he already earned it by virtue of the office he once held as Head of State.
As we count down to elections in the next four months, we should ask ourselves the hard question: Do we still want to start making political campaign noise and competing for the presidency when we are still locked in a fierce legal dispute over the body of someone who once occupied the same office we are in competition for?
Whatever that choice we make, let’s remember that nature has a way of speaking and pronouncing a verdict louder than the South African courts.