Zimbabweans have been confused about when and where they
would get to pay their last respects to Mugabe since his death in a Singapore
hospital on Friday after a long illness.
Mugabe had dominated Zimbabwean politics for almost four
decades from independence in 1980 until he was removed by his own army in a
November 2017 coup.
Revered by many as a liberator who freed his people from
white minority rule, Mugabe was vilified by others for wrecking one of Africa’s
most promising economies and ruthlessly crushing his opponents.
The Zimbabwean government said in a memo sent to embassies
on Sunday that it planned to hold a state funeral for Mugabe in the National
Sports Stadium on Saturday, with a burial ceremony on Sunday, but it did not
say where the burial would be held.
The choice of Mugabe’s resting place has been a topic of
discussion since the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper reported last month that
Mugabe would snub the offer of a burial at National Heroes Acre - a site
reserved for the country’s heroes - because he felt bitter about the way he was
removed from power.
If Mugabe is buried in Kutama village, 85 km (52 miles)
from Harare, it would be a major rebuke of his successor, President Emmerson
Mnangagwa, and the ruling ZANU-PF party that Mugabe helped to found.
A Mugabe relative who is helping with funeral arrangements
told Reuters that the family had compromised by agreeing to have a state
funeral led by the government on Saturday but is insisting that Mugabe would be
buried at Kutama, his place of birth. The relative, speaking from Singapore,
asked not to be named.
Two other relatives in Zimbabwe also said the family had
agreed that Mugabe, affectionately known as “Mudhara” (Old man in the Shona
language) by his supporters, would be buried at Kutama.
“The family has made a decision that Mudhara will be buried
at Kutama - that is the position - but the government is still engaging the
family to try to have him buried at (National) Heroes Acre,” the relative in
Singapore told Reuters.
“What is clear is that there is no agreement on the place
of burial. Even the government statement does not address that issue. It is not
settled.”
The memo sent by Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to
embassies in Harare said heads of state would be expected to leave the stadium
immediately after the funeral ceremony because officials would be busy with
preparations for the burial.
Mnangagwa’s spokesman George Charamba, in comments to The
Sunday Mail newspaper, denied that the government and Mugabe’s family were at
loggerheads over where the former president should be buried.
He said the provisional plan was for the burial to be at
National Heroes Acre.
The Sunday Mail said Mugabe’s body was expected back from
Singapore on Wednesday afternoon and that Mnangagwa, members of Mugabe’s family
and traditional chiefs from Mugabe’s Zvimba district would receive the body at
Harare’s Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.
Leo Mugabe, the former president’s nephew, told Reuters on
Sunday that Mugabe’s family and traditional chiefs had finalised their
preferred programme for his burial but it had yet to be approved by the
government.
He was not available for comment after Reuters saw the
government memo or after it spoke to the three other Mugabe relatives.
At the packed Sacred Heart Cathedral in Harare, where
Mugabe used to attend Catholic Mass with his first wife Sally and second wife
Grace, people prayed on Sunday morning for their departed former leader.
“We are praying for our relatives who have died. Without
forgetting to pray for our former president, Comrade Robert Mugabe. ... We are
asking God if there is anything that he did wrong in his life that he be
forgiven,” the priest told the congregation.
Chris Sambo, a former soccer administrator who used to
arrange matches for Mugabe in Kutama, said the southern African country’s
Catholic community had lost one of its most important members.
Tsitsi Samukange, another churchgoer, said Mugabe should be
praised for fighting for his country.
“I think everyone can admit that without the work he did we
would not be as independent as we are,” she said.
“You know when you fight, in a fight sometimes you lose
your teeth? And we became poorer. But that’s a fight and he did it, and we
should give him that.”
Many Harare residents said they were saddened by Mugabe’s
death and that it marked the end of an era.
But his ousting in 2017 was accompanied by celebrations
across the country of 13 million and critics at home and abroad viewed him as a
power-obsessed autocrat who unleashed death squads, rigged elections and ruined
the economy to keep control.
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