Chief orders that Mugabe’s body be exhumed, reburied in Zimbabwe capital
At the strong insistence of his family with his widow Grace leading the charge, Mugabe was in September 2019 buried at his rural village rather than the Heroes Acre in Harare, despite Zimbabwe’s government announcing days after his passing that the former strongman would be interred in a special mausoleum at the national shrine.
PRETORIA, May 25 (ANA) – The row over the final resting place of Zimbabwe’s former long-time president Robert Gabriel Mugabe has been revived in the public discourse, after a traditional chief in the district where his remains were buried ordered that he be dug up and reburied at the national heroes’ shrine in the capital Harare.
On Tuesday, independent daily newspaper NewsDay reported that Chief Zvimba, born Stanley Wurayayi Mhondoro, had ordered the exhumation of Mugabe’s body and reburial at Heroes Acre on July 1, igniting rage from his family.
At the strong insistence of his relatives with his widow Grace leading the charge, Mugabe was in September 2019 buried at his rural village rather than the Heroes Acre in Harare, despite Zimbabwe’s government announcing days after his passing that the former strongman would be interred in a special mausoleum at the shrine.
A few days later, state media reported that the former president and commander-in-chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces would now be buried in his rural Kutama village in Zvimba, about 90 kilometres from Harare, “at the insistence of his family, though government had started working on the mausoleum it [the Mugabe family] had demanded earlier”.
Mugabe was buried in a tamper-proof casket. At the time, his family said he had given the instructions because he feared people would “use my body”.
Mugabe’s nephew and family spokesman Leo Mugabe told the state-controlled Zimpapers Television Network that “he wanted to be buried next to his mother but there is no space there” so the family elected to bury him, in a private ceremony, in the same village as his mother.
On Tuesday, NewsDay reported that a traditional court had made the ruling on Mugabe’s reburial last Thursday, but it was delivered to his plush Blue Roof mansion in Harare’s wealthy Borrowdale suburb on Monday morning.
“I give powers to those empowered at law to exhume the body of the late Robert Mugabe from Kutama and rebury him at the National Heroes’ Acre in Harare at a place shown by his father Chief Chidziva as per our culture,” the chief’s verdict read, according to the newspaper.
“The father of the deceased, who is Chief Chidziva, and the mother of the deceased, who is Chief Gutu, have all agreed that he be buried at the National Heroes’ Acre.”
Grace Mugabe, who is reportedly out of the country, was fined five heads of cattle and a goat over the family’s 2019 defiance.
– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa