Order on Mugabe’s final resting place likely to rekindle row

There are concerns that a Zimbabwean traditional chief’s order is likely to rekindle a row over the late former president, Robert Mugabe’s, final resting place. The traditional chief on Monday ordered that the remains of Mugabe be exhumed and reburied at a national cemetery.

Mugabe passed away in 2019 and was buried in his rural home Kutama town as per his wishes and not at the National Heroes Acre in the capital, Harare, as his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa and others had hoped.

Mugabe’s family has rejected the order.

It says Mugabe had expressed fears that his political foes who had ousted him from power in 2017, would use his remains for rituals if he were buried at the national cemetery.

There was a complainant from the village where former President Robert Mugabe was buried. The complainant was complaining that Grace Mugabe, violated tradition by burying Mugabe inside the courtyard of his homestead, but also indicating that he shouldn’t have been buried in Zvimba, but instead should have been buried in Harare at the Heroes Acre.

Mugabe passed away in a hospital in Singapore at the age of 95.

Body of Robert Mugabe taken to his home village for burial: