Mugabe's Body Kept in Hometown after State Funeral, Burial for October

Kp Reporter·Africa·

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Mugabe's Body Kept in Hometown after State Funeral, Burial for October

By BBC The body of Zimbabwe's former president Robert Mugabe is being kept in his birthplace, after a state funeral in the capital Harare. African leaders...

By BBC

The body of Zimbabwe's former president Robert Mugabe is being kept in his birthplace, after a state funeral in the capital Harare.

African leaders hailed Mr Mugabe as a liberation hero, while current Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa said "our motherland is in tears". Mr Mugabe's body will be viewed by the public in his rural hometown, Kutama, on Sunday, local media report.

African leaders, past and present, filed into the stadium to applause, alongside veterans of the continent's liberation struggles. Mr Mnangagwa - the man who overthrew Mr Mugabe two years ago - sat just two seats away from Mr Mugabe's widow, Grace.

The public tributes to Mugabe's role as a liberation hero - paid by a succession of speakers including Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta - came in sharp contrast to the final words of the Mugabe family's own representative, Walter Chidhakwa, whose voice cracked as he spoke of his uncle's final years after he'd been removed from office.

"He was a sad man. A sad, sad, sad man. It was a hard and excruciating journey." It was a powerful reference to the clear tensions that still exist between the current government and the Mugabe family. More than a dozen current and former African leaders attended the funeral, hailing Mr Mugabe as a pan-Africanist who had dedicated his life to the people of Zimbabwe.

Mr Kenyatta said he was unwavering in his insistence that Africa's problems demanded African solutions. Later the crowds booed and jeered at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa - which appeared to be a reaction to the xenophobic violence across South Africa in the last month.

He acknowledged the boos by saying "in the past two weeks, we as South Africans have been going through a challenging period. We have had acts of violence erupting in some parts of our country… This has led, as I can hear you're responding to, to the deaths and injuries of a number of people". But he insisted: "We as South Africans are not xenophobic".

The funeral follows a row between the Mugabe family and the government over his burial. It has now been agreed that he will be buried in the National Heroes' Acre monument in Harare, his family says. Family spokesman and nephew Leo Mugabe says this should be in about a month, when the new shrine to Mugabe will be built at the existing Heroes' Acre.

Earlier plans to have a burial on Sunday appear to have been cancelled. Mugabe, who was 95, died last week while being treated in Singapore.

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