GOVT IS TO BLAME
…If it had been honest, we would’ve buried Lungu by now – Sinkamba
-
We left as the council of leaders from the Tonse Alliance only to find the gate was locked, and there were policemen there, a lot of them, hundreds.
By George Zulu
ZAMBIANS and the world must blame the Zambian government for the crisis surrounding the repatriation of former president Edgar Lungu’s body from South Africa to Zambia for burial, Green Party president Peter Sinkamba has said.
Since Lungu died in South Africa on June 5, his body remains marooned in that country because of a bitter feud between his family and the Zambian government over the manner in which his funeral and burial should be handled and by who.
Sinkamba said the government’s dishonest behaviour had made it difficult to repatriate Lungu’s body to Zambia.
“If government had not acted in the manner it did, in a very dishonest manner it did, we would have definitely put him to rest by now,” he said.
Sinkamba said this when he featured on the Hot Seat programme on Hot FM radio station.
He said what had happened at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport created a red flag of dishonesty on the part of the government and the family could therefore not be blamed for the current impasse.
“But when we arrived at the international airport there, the international departures, we were told ‘the body was not coming through this particular terminal. You have to go to the Presidential Pavilion. That’s where the body will be arriving’,” he said.
Sinkamba said at the Presidential Pavilion, opposition leaders found that the gates had been locked and were told that only few invited individuals were being allowed in.
“So, we left as the council of leaders from the Tonse Alliance, only to find the gate was locked, and there were policemen there, a lot of them, hundreds. And they told us that ‘sorry, we are not going to allow you to go in. We are only allowing people to go in with the invitation cards’. So, I said, who is issuing invitation cards? Because we are supposed to be the main players in this whole thing, but who is issuing cards?’ So, the police said that ‘for us as policemen, we’ve just been told you have to come with an invitation card. Try to call the powers that be, find out what was happening’,” Sinkamba said.
He said President Hakainde Hichilema’s government had created the crisis the country was going through around the burial of Lungu’s body.
Sinkamba said what the government wanted was to hold a church service at the airport, a programme which had not been agreed to with the family.
“Then they decided to make a U-turn. From that point forward, everything else went berserk. So, it was the happenings at the airport that informed the decision by the family not to repatriate the body on that Wednesday, because among the programmes that they [government] had was to have a church service there, which was not part of the programme agreed on with the family,” he said.
Sinkamba said the government should compromise to put to rest the former president.
“Government, by and large, is the one which is supposed to be on the weaker side, not to demonstrate that they have got power. To think that because they have power, they can grab the body by power will not help. I don’t think that is a civilised way of doing things. Because even if they were very, very genuine about the whole thing, they wouldn’t have, for example, ambushed the family when we were in South Africa at the cathedral there in Johannesburg waiting for the body to come for service only to be told there ‘is a court injunction, so you cannot proceed’,” he said.
Sinkamba said Hichilema’s administration had caused more pain not only to the grieving family but also to Zambians who believed in Lungu.
