By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The family of the late Zambian President Edgar Lungu and the Zambian government have reached an agreement in the high court this morning, where a reconsideration application was meant to be heard.
Lungu passed away on 5 June 2025 at a hospital in Pretoria, South Africa.
It is the latest twist in a 10-month saga over what should happen to his remains following a long-standing feud between Lungu and his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema.
The government was challenging an order that was handed down last week that the former president’s remains be taken back to the family’s mortuary.
Two Mountains Burial Services, the funeral home where Lungu’s remains were originally being kept, has said it will no longer accept the body and has asked the Lungu family to find an alternative.
The parties have now agreed to have the body at Avbob Pretoria East pending the finalization of the appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
The appeal has been brought by the family after the high court ordered that Lungu’s remains be buried in Zambia. They want him buried in South Africa.
The SCA addressed the Lungu family’s application for condonation due to late filing of their appeal.
The order specifies:
- Condonation as applied for is granted. The applicant for condonation is to pay costs of the application.
- Leave to appeal is granted to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
- The costs order of the court a quo in dismissing the application for leave to appeal is set aside and the costs of the application for leave to appeal in this court and the court a quo are costs in the appeal. If the applicant does not proceed with the appeal, the applicant is to pay these costs.
The matter was all supposed to have been settled in June, when the family initially agreed that there could be a state funeral in Zambia. But the plans were scuppered over a dispute about what role of Hichilema would play.
Lungu’s family said one of his dying wishes was that Hichilema should not go anywhere near his body.
The key to understanding the animosity was the more than 100 days that Hichilema, opposition leader at the time, spent in detention in 2017, awaiting trial on treason charges.
He was accused of endangering the life of then-President Lungu after his motorcade allegedly refused to give way to the one transporting the head of state.
The charges were only dropped after intervention of the secretary general of the Commonwealth. This was one of several times that Hichilema was arrested while he was in the opposition.