By Burnett Munthali
The Zambian Government may have the law on its side, but that doesn’t mean it has the moral high ground.
Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha can cite South African court orders and legal technicalities all day, yet no legal brief can erase the deeper cultural violation unfolding here.
The government’s “public interest” lawsuit to seize the body of former President Edgar Lungu from his own family may be legal under certain interpretations, but in the court of public conscience, it is a dangerous overreach.
African burial traditions are not optional rituals—they are binding codes of dignity, respect, and spiritual continuity.
You cannot simply draft legislation or win a court order to override them without causing lasting damage to the cultural soul of the nation.
In this case, the government’s insistence on interring Lungu at Embassy Park against his family’s wishes feels less like a gesture of honour and more like an attempt to control the final chapter of his story.
The legal argument is clear enough: the state considers the burial of a former head of state a matter of national symbolism and wants that symbolism preserved in a state-sanctioned site.
But the ethical question is equally clear: who has the right to decide how a man is laid to rest—his family or the government he once served, and later politically opposed?
Even if the law empowers the state to take charge, the deeper issue is whether it should.
African tradition teaches that burial is a bridge to the ancestors, and the wishes of the deceased are paramount.
To bulldoze those wishes with a legal stamp is to commit cultural vandalism under the guise of law.
Mr Lungu’s family claims he did not want his successor at his funeral, and whether one agrees with that sentiment or not, it reflects a deeply personal boundary that should be respected.
Turning a burial into a political battleground dishonours not only the man but the institution the government claims to protect.
The longer this dispute drags on, the more it reveals the dangerous gap between what is legally permissible and what is culturally and ethically right.
In the end, the Pretoria High Court’s decision will determine who has custody of the body—but it will not heal the wound that this public tussle has inflicted on Zambia’s collective conscience.
Law can compel action, but only respect can preserve dignity.
The government should remember that sometimes, the moral victory lies not in winning the case, but in knowing when to let go.
