The burial site of Edgar Lungu, Zambia’s former president, has become the latest conflict in a relationship marred by hostility

By Zimasa Matiwane and Rabecca Lungu

Zimasa Matiwane reported from Johannesburg, and Rabecca Lungu reported from Lusaka, Zambia.

June 30, 2025, 5:29 a.m. ET

President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia and his predecessor Edgar Lungu have spent years taking shots at each other.

Each man’s home has been raided by the police when the other was in power. The government under Mr. Lungu arrested Mr. Hichilema for having failed to give way to his convoy. Mr. Hichilema’s government stripped Mr. Lungu of his retirement benefits, arguing that Zambian law required it because Mr. Lungu had re-entered politics.

The rivalry is so bitter that it has extended into the afterlife.

Mr. Lungu, who died three and a half weeks ago at 68, has yet to be buried as his family and Mr. Hichilema’s government spar over the terms of the former president’s funeral.

While Mr. Hichilema has ordered a state funeral for Mr. Lungu in Zambia, Mr. Lungu’s relatives have said that their loved one did not want his political nemesis involved in his burial. They have sought a funeral and burial in South Africa, where Mr. Lungu died after treatment for an undisclosed illness.

A South African court thwarted those plans last week, at least temporarily. After the Zambian government filed a lawsuit challenging the family’s decision to bury Mr. Lungu in South Africa, a judge halted the proceeding until the case was resolved.

“The family only wants to give him a dignified burial, not one that is shrouded in mockery, in P.R., in giving the international community a perception that he was properly treated,” said Makebi Zulu, a spokesman for Mr. Lungu’s family.

Mr. Lungu served six years as president of his southern African nation before losing a race for re-election against Mr. Hichilema in 2021 amid accusations that Mr. Lungu had governed with authoritarian tactics. Mr. Hichilema’s supporters believed he offered a chance for democratic renewal. But Mr. Lungu’s allies have accused the current president of persecution and hardhanded ways.

Mr. Zulu said the Hichilema government wanted to force the family into a state funeral to try to cleanse its image with the world. With the court’s order halting Mr. Lungu’s funeral service in Johannesburg, the family instead held a prayer service at a Catholic cathedral.

Speaking afterward, Mr. Zulu demanded decency from the Zambian government, saying it owed the Lungu family an apology for having persecuted Mr. Lungu and for pushing a state funeral as a public-relations stunt.

“No one spoke to Edgar Lungu when he was alive,” Mr. Zulu said. “And now people want to pretend to speak for him, when they were never there for him in his lifetime.”

The Zambian government believed it had reached an agreement with the Lungu family for Mr. Hichilema to preside over Mr. Lungu’s funeral, Zambia’s foreign minister, Mulambo Haimbe, told the South African news outlet News24. He said the government was surprised to later learn of the family’s resistance to Mr. Hichilema’s receiving Mr. Lungu’s remains and participating in his funeral.

While the family’s wishes should be respected, Mr. Haimbe said, Mr. Lungu’s burial was also a matter of public interest for Zambians. He emphasized the need to follow historical precedent for burying former heads of state.

A major source of the anger among Mr. Lungu’s supporters was the government’s withdrawal of his retirement benefits after he considered running for president again. The nation’s highest court ultimately ruled that he was ineligible to run again because he had served the two-term limit.

As a retired president, Mr. Lungu was entitled to three security officers, a diplomatic passport, three state cars, a furnished house, medical insurance and funeral expenses.

Without those privileges, Mr. Lungu came to South Africa like any other private citizen for medical treatment, Mr. Zulu said.

“He came on a commercial flight, flying economy,” Mr. Zulu said, adding that Mr. Lungu, “walked through immigration like a normal person, waited for an Uber outside the airport.”

Euston Chiputa, ‎a lecturer at the University of Zambia, said that the Hichilema and Lungu camps had been unable to separate personal and political issues, leading to the current standoff.

Mr. Chiputa warned that while the family took precedence in funeral arrangements, its desire to bury the former leader in South Africa had created a crisis.

“This decision could set a precedent, prompting other families of former heads of state to exhume and rebury their loved ones, potentially disrupting national history,” he said.

With the drama playing out on South African soil, the country’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, traveled to Zambia on June 22 to try to ease tensions. He met with Mr. Hichilema and released a statement that the family’s wishes should be respected but that he felt that Mr. Lungu deserved a state funeral in Zambia.

The Zambian government wants Mr. Lungu buried at Embassy Park Presidential Burial Site in the capital, Lusaka, where the country’s other former leaders are buried.

For now, though, Mr. Lungu’s final resting place remains unresolved.

The case is scheduled to return to the South African court in early August.

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