Late in the morning on Aug. 8, 2025, most Zambians had their attention fixed on the Pretoria High Court in South Africa. After a two-month-long feud between Zambia’s government and the family of the late President Edgar Lungu, who died aged 68 on June 5 in Johannesburg and is yet to be repatriated to his home country of Zambia, the court ruled that the Zambian state was entitled to bring his body home. This cleared the way for the state funeral that the government desired. The family, however, then applied for leave to appeal the case. The dispute was taken to South Africa’s Constitutional Court, which dismissed the Lungu family’s direct appeal bid on Aug. 26. As a result, Lungu’s body remains in South Africa while the family chooses to either pursue an appeal through the Supreme Court or go back to the negotiating table with the Zambian government.
Lungu died in South Africa after months of medical treatment for what was later known to be a throat-related illness. His family has since bemoaned that he was denied permission to leave Zambia for medical treatment on several occasions, depriving him of what may have been lifesaving help.
And now, for the past three months, Lungu’s corpse has been a political battlefield. The former head of state’s body has been stopped on the tarmac, pulled through the courts and turned into the latest political battlefield in Zambian politics. Lungu, although dead, now appears more relevant than ever.
Importantly, the conflict between Zambia’s government and the late president’s family is no longer just a question of where Lungu is buried. It is about much more: who gets to shape his legacy, how Zambia chooses to remember him and what that memory says about the country’s future.
The Zambian government is now fighting for a state funeral, while the family members, in complex union with the political opposition, ultimately seek a private burial in South Africa. Undoubtedly, they have their own reasons for resisting the return of their relative’s body to the Zambian government. Initially, they had insisted on a rural home burial in Zambia, reflecting one of their strongest preferences. At one point, a repatriation plan was proposed in which Lungu’s body would be flown to Zambia’s Eastern Province, where he had lived, for public viewing in Lusaka during the mornings and in the Eastern Province each afternoon for a set number of days. But this plan was later abandoned in favor of a burial abroad.
Some suggest that the family’s insistence on burying the former president in South Africa stems from the fact that a number of his relatives are — or soon could be — facing serious charges if they return to Zambia. Esther Lungu, the former first lady, recently defied a Zambian court summons in a case accusing her of vehicle theft and possession of illicitly acquired property. Edgar Lungu’s children stand accused of similar offences, including money laundering.
Most observers, however, believe the feud between the state and family to be deeply personal and trace its roots to years of political tension in the southern African nation. For more than a decade, Edgar Lungu, in office from 2015 to 2021, and sitting President Hakainde Hichilema, a wealthy entrepreneur-turned-politician who rose to power in 2021 after years in opposition, were bitter political rivals and represented different sides of the coin in what is informally a two-party state.
During Lungu’s tenure, Zambia experienced democratic backsliding, marked by an increasingly lawless society in which his party foot soldiers, known as cadres, at times wielded more authority than the national police.
While in power, Lungu once had Hichilema imprisoned for 100 days on treason charges, after the latter refused to give way to Lungu’s presidential motorcade while they were en route to the same traditional ceremony in Zambia’s Western Province. When Hichilema finally won the presidency, a landslide win on his sixth attempt, the tension and rivalry between the two men continued to shadow Zambia’s politics.
That rivalry is now playing out in Pretoria’s courtrooms, with Lungu’s body at the center of the fight. Frustrated by stalled negotiations, Zambia’s Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha rushed to the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, filing a case just minutes before the family-led funeral was set to begin. Weeks later, when the ruling in favor of Zambia’s government was finally delivered, Kabesha was interrupted by a loud wailing while still in court conducting an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Lungu’s sister cursed Kabesha in Chibemba and cried, “My young brother died like a wild animal,” before relatives in black escorted her out. The scene laid bare the emotion behind the court fight, transforming a dry legal ruling into a moment charged with grief and politics.
Across Africa, bodies of polarizing leaders have become symbols of unresolved debates over power, forgiveness and identity. From Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe to José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, to Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and John Atta Mills in Ghana, funeral disputes have exposed the limits of state authority and the unfinished business of national reconciliation. Mugabe’s family resisted the Zimbabwean state’s demand for a burial at the National Heroes Acre, insisting he be laid to rest in his village. In his case, the body became a stand-in for unresolved debates about history, legitimacy and identity: Mugabe freed Zimbabwe from colonial rule but left behind one of Africa’s most authoritarian states.
Dos Santos’ children battled over whether he should be buried in exile in Spain or in Angola, where the ruling party wanted to reclaim him as a national figure. In this case, too, the body symbolized the tension between legacy and reality: He ended Angola’s civil war but presided over an era of entrenched corruption and nepotism.
Mobutu, who died in exile, was never brought home to what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and lies instead in Rabat, Morocco. Here, again, the body posed unresolved questions: Mobutu’s rule in Zaire was a violently repressive kleptocracy.
Even in Ghana, Atta Mills’ grave became a source of public anger when his brother accused authorities of tampering with it, a controversy deepened by the years of neglect at Asomdwe Park, where cattle once grazed over the late president’s resting place. Atta Mills is widely seen as a conciliatory figure, and the disputes over his tomb reflected unfinished work around how he would be remembered.
The question at issue, then, is how much any of these figures should define the futures of their respective countries. It is of a highly sensitive character, reaching its dramatic climax only when these leaders are no longer among us.
In that sense, Africa’s funeral disputes encapsulate the emotional fragmentation that occurs as citizens, governments and the families of late presidents all engage with the formation of national histories and identities during times of transition.
According to Walima Kalusa, a historian, senior lecturer at the University of Eswatini and co-author of the 2013 book “Death, Belief and Politics in Central African History,” African leaders with competing ideologies and practices often seek to appropriate the legacies of dead presidents: “In Africa and beyond, death serves as a symbolic site on which political elites of varying hues craft competing political visions and projects. In so doing, they knowingly or unknowingly seek to sacralise these projects and thus make them ‘natural’ and hence acceptable to the governed.”
The spectacle around Lungu’s death may feel extraordinary, but it rests on much deeper traditions. To understand why funeral disputes strike such a nerve in African politics, one has to look beyond the headlines and into the cultural weight such ceremonies carry across the continent.
Funerals have, unquestionably, become one of the flash points of Africa’s democratic development. Far from involving straightforward logistics and protocols, funerals are perfect storms where multiple factors coincide and clash, sparking new and intriguing questions about the continent’s struggle for political stability and coherent national identities. Funerals are political fronts where state power often appears more paper tiger than iron fist.
To fully grasp the political vitality of these disputes, however, one must first attend to the social fabric of funerals in sub-Saharan Africa. Martin Jindra, a cultural anthropologist at Boston University, has co-edited one of the most comprehensive volumes on the topic: “Funerals in Africa: Explorations of a Social Phenomenon” (2011). Jindra’s research shows striking similarities in the ways that Africans interpret and engage with funerals.
Notwithstanding the wide variations found across the continent, Jindra reminds us that funerals in sub-Saharan Africa take place in environments without sharp divisions between the living and the dead. These spheres are “fluid and interconnected,” Jindra explained. Asked about the recent funeral disputes on the continent, he was hardly surprised by the heated debates over the physical place of burial. The most important factor, he said, is the conceptualization of land. Many Africans believe that the spirits of their ancestors rest in the soil where they are buried. For that reason, the place of burial often indicates power.
“The power of a person doesn’t end when that person dies,” Jindra said. “People want to be associated with this power, even utilize it. Funerals are often contentious and potent because people are battling over this power. It is about who gets to obtain and control it. That’s why the place of burial is so important, and that’s why public cemeteries have generally not worked in many places in Africa.”
Jindra, who has attended and analyzed numerous funerals in sub-Saharan Africa, explained that dead bodies were, at least traditionally, linked to “danger” and “pollution.” “Traditionally, the days after the passing of an authoritative person was a scary time. It was generally believed that people still hold power after they die. The dead person can take other people with them to the grave.”
Jindra added that while these features have somewhat declined with the popularity of Christianity, funerals are still spiritually charged events in many African communities, an atmosphere undoubtedly finding its way, by one means or another, into the sphere of politics.
These cultural undercurrents don’t exist in isolation. They collide with broader tensions that define African societies today, such as the push and pull between rural customs and national politics, or between tradition and modern statehood. Funeral disputes often expose these divides in ways few other events can.
Africa is often depicted in a dualistic fashion and perceived through the filter of hopeless or hopeful, indebted or burgeoning, war-torn or peaceful. To Stig Jensen, an associate professor at the Centre of African Studies at the University of Copenhagen, leaders’ funeral disputes are indicative of the many transitions Africa faces. The conflicts mirror some of the continent’s most pressing challenges, reopening wounds at times of transformation.
One of these sources of conflict is the dichotomy between the local and the national, Jensen told New Lines. “The rural home is hugely significant in many African communities. It means a lot to the local community what happens to their sons when they die. Undoubtedly, people believe that their sons should be buried locally and linked to their traditions.”
Similar notions have been observed in Ghana, where relatives of the country’s first president, the legendary Kwame Nkrumah, still occasionally ask for his body, buried in the capital Accra, to be returned to his home village of Nkroful. Nkrumah died in exile in Romania in 1972.
Another element of Jensen’s argument involves the division between the so-called traditional and the modern. Traditionally, leaders in many sub-Saharan African communities would be mourned almost as if they were saints. This, Jensen holds, was coupled to precolonial forms of authority. Chiefs and kings were remembered not necessarily for their deeds, but for the throne and title they held, a collective remembering later woven into the legacy of liberation leaders-turned-presidents such as Mugabe and Kenneth Kaunda, both of whom today have large airports, boulevards and other public spaces named after them.
In the past decade, however, Jensen has observed a shift in Africa’s politically charged funeral disputes, especially when it comes to how the families of heads of state are being treated. Whereas families of late presidents were traditionally endowed with limitless respect and privilege, they are now becoming increasingly vulnerable in the aftermath of their relatives’ passing. “Precolonially, great support was extended to the survivors of an iconic person,” Jensen said. “With the showdown after Dos Santos, Mugabe and Lungu, we now observe something quite different unfolding. We might call it a modern way of doing things. Families are becoming more ordinary when their dad or husband is no longer alive.”
Yet culture and politics alone don’t explain the frequency of these clashes. Much of the turmoil also stems from the absence of clear legal frameworks. When presidents die, few constitutions spell out exactly who should decide where they are buried or how their funerals should unfold. That gap leaves plenty of room for conflict.
While sociocultural and political explanations are surely useful for understanding Africa’s funeral skirmishes, Jensen and Kalusa, as well as other observers, agree that Africa’s inadequate legal frameworks must be at the center of the analysis. “Besides providing for state funerals, most constitutions [in Africa] seldom clarify what roles the bereaved family of a late president should play in the aftermath of the death of a president,” Kalusa explained.
In a longer interview with BBC Africa, the prominent Zambian lawyer John Sangwa — who declined to speak to New Lines for this article, citing the sensitivity of the current funeral conflict in the country — expressed similar views. “If there were express legal provisions, I think these challenges would not have a reason,” Sangwa told the BBC.
Tanzania is one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a full-fledged legal framework guiding the procedure following the passing of a head of state. The Tanzanian National Leaders Funeral Act from 2006 clearly details how state and government funerals should take place. Among other things, the law specifies that if a leader left burial preferences in a will, these must be honored after his or her passing.
According to Jensen, it’s time for African countries to ask some vital legal questions: “There might have been amendments along the way, but there’s a need for African countries to find out what kind of legislation they really want.” In his view, countries need to decide whether the legislation passed down from colonizing powers is sufficient. “It’s a debate the countries need to have internally: What does it mean to have held a public office, on the local as well as national level?”
If law provides one answer, symbolism provides another. State funerals, with all their pomp and ceremony, are not just about closure; they are performances of power, unity and nationhood — moments when the state puts itself on display to its people, and to the world.
In recent weeks, as Zambians have grown ever more tired of the continuing dispute between Lungu’s family and his successor, not a few of them have suggested that the government should scrap the state funeral entirely. A common view has been that President Hichilema should refocus his attention on fixing Zambia’s economy, securing jobs for the country’s largely unemployed youth and empowering the country’s citizens to invest in a mining sector dominated by foreign actors.
But, as Jensen explained, state funerals are important events in the nation-building projects of Africa’s still relatively young states and hence cannot easily be downplayed: “State funerals are creating the power of cohesion and are linked to the so-called modern project. In all African societies, there are gigantic funeral processions when important people die, and these have enormous national significance. For that reason, there simply has to be pomp and splendor during these events.”
Jensen pointed out another central aspect of state funerals: the attendees. It is vital to heads of state that the right people, including both African and foreign leaders, attend these ceremonies. Will China’s president show up? Will Botswana’s, or maybe a controversial oppositional figure from a neighboring country? These questions carry immense political weight in many African nations.
State funerals are not just valuable in a political light, however. Funerals are also ways of pleasing the dead, Jindra explained. They are frequently attended by large crowds, the anthropologist explained, and if you are not present, someone might suspect you of being somehow involved in the death.
During Jindra’s research, which was predominantly in Cameroon, he found that memorial services could take place a whole year, or even many years, after someone had died. These funerals often work to demonstrate the unity of a family or an ethnic group, Jindra added, while insults and anger during the mourning period, as currently seen in Zambia, will frequently be associated with witchcraft or other socially constrained spirituality.
The question remains when, or if, African countries will introduce new laws to avoid future conflicts over funerals. Legal frameworks will, if implemented correctly, likely set a precedent for grieving families who find themselves in a state of uncertainty and contribute, at least to some degree, to a sense of national belonging across the continent. They might be symbolic events, but sometimes symbols matter.
That being said, Kalusa held out a less optimistic prospect: “Funeral disputes will continue to mar African countries’ efforts to consolidate democracy and national unity as these wrangles deepen into political polarization and intensify the struggle for power.”
In Zambia, as elsewhere, the fight over where a president is laid to rest is rarely just about the grave. It is about who controls the story that will be told long after the mourning ends.
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