“Secretary to the Cabinet, Mr Patrick K Kangwa has advised that, the nation will be updated shortly on the ongoing funeral arrangements relating to the funeral of the late President, Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu as the family and Government consultative process has reached advanced stages. The Secretary to the Cabinet has further called for calm as the arrangments are being finalised,” says a very low-context, medium-typo Saturday press release from the Zambian Secretary of the Cabinet.

Lungu, 68, was a National Zero favorite and even in death he’s still a fucking asshole. Current President Hakinde Hichilema, 63, had defeated Lungu in 2021 after no fewer than five attempts in the 2006, 2008, 2011, 2015, and 2016 elections but spent the next four years being heckled by Lungu. And more than heckled as last year Lungu plotted a coup against Hichilema, who responded by putting Lungu on house arrest and having former First Lady Esther Lungu, daughter Chiyeso Katete, and another relative prosecuted for what were probably credible charges of property fraud.

And then there’s the time in December when several of Lungu’s minions were arrested for witchcraft rituals in which they sacrificed animals to put a dark hex on Hichilema. That one’s a long, funny story as one of the guys was the brother of a Lungu fanboy MP who escaped from a hospital…

Anyway Lungu, who died in South Africa on June 5th, understandably left instructions to his family that his hated successor “should not be anywhere near” his body, the BBC reports on what they describe as a “bitter feud” over the memorial plans, shit that Hichilema kept did not do anything to stop from stirring by issuing a “call for peace, a call for love and a call for unity” amid “collective grief” and kept pushing for a state funeral despite the family’s plans for a private service.

Lungu’s family and allies never disclosed what the former president was dying of. They did however claim that Hichilema had made his condition worse by refusing to allow his predecessor to travel to South Africa for treatment until it was too late, an accusation that maybe could gain some credibility if they would be more forthcoming on the illness and why it couldn’t be treated in Zambia.