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Home Southern Africa Grace Mugabe contests Zimbabwe’s decision to exhume husband’s body

Grace Mugabe contests Zimbabwe’s decision to exhume husband’s body

by Editor lll
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Grace Mugabe, the widow of Zimbabwe’s lengthy former ruler Robert Mugabe, on Monday, has opposed a court order to exhume her husband’s remains for reburial at a national shrine.

After years of squabbling over his last resting place, Mugabe was buried in his rural home village of Kutama, about 90 kilometers west of the capital Harare, in September 2019.

His family had objected to the government’s intentions to bury him at Harare’s National Heroes’ Acre, where work on an unique tomb for him had begun.

A traditional leader, however, penalized Grace Mugabe five cows and two goats in May for unlawfully burying Mugabe and ordered his exhumation and reburial in Harare.

Mugabe’s children then appealed the chief’s directive — but a magistrate court last month confirmed that order, saying the ex-president’s children had no legal authority to challenge the exhumation of their father.

That prompted Grace Mugabe to take over the legal battle.

Papers on Monday showed that the widow, in an appeal to the High Court, said the magistrate’s order upholding the directive of the traditional chief was “grossly irregular and unreasonable”.

Robert Mugabe died in a Singapore hospital on September 6, 2019, aged 95, almost two years after a military coup ended his autocratic 37-year rule.

The government wanted him to be buried at the National Heroes’ Acre, which is set aside for heroes of the liberation struggle against colonial rule.

But Mugabe’s family said that before his death, he had told them he did not want to be buried at the shrine, which is also a tourist site. 

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