THIS was a dramatic week on Zimbabwe’s social media pages.
Former Zambian president, Edgar Chagwa Lungu, who died in South Africa earlier this month, was alleged to have been travelling on a Zimbabwean diplomatic passport.
If true, then the authorities have some explaining to do.
A passport denotes citizenship on the face of it.
It is the only legitimate document for one to travel freely across the borders.
If one breaches the immigration laws of the host country, they are deported to the country of their origin.
The accusations of the Zimbabwean passport started surfacing as the fight for the right to control Lungu’s burial reached a peak.
For context, the Zambian authorities are arguing that Lungu, as a former President, should be buried in Zambia.
- HH finally president after five losses
- HH finally president after five losses
- African leaders dying overseas expose cruel deception of independence
- Village Rhapsody: Reforms a must before 2023 elections
Keep Reading
However, the family insists Lungu in his last days said his successor and current President Hakainde Hichilema should be nowhere close to the body.
The Lungu family, therefore, declined a State funeral opting for a private burial in South Africa.
This is unprecedented.
All former Zambian presidents are interred in their country.
Generally, most former presidents across the globe are given State funerals and are buried in their own countries.
This is not the first time in Zambia that a family has denied a State funeral.
The founding Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda’s family insisted that he should be buried at a private cemetery at his family farm next to his late wife Betty.
However, the government took the extraordinary position to get a High Court order to have Kaunda buried at the national shrine.
Zimbabwe has had a fair share of its corpse dramas.
The late former President Robert Gabriel Mugabe in several instances overruled families of departed national heroes and buried them at the National Heroes Acre.
Mugabe argued that national heroes ceased to be private citizens, they were public and hence, the State decides their burial place.
However, upon his demise in 2019, the Mugabe family refused him to be interred at the National Heroes Acre.
Despite three weeks of negotiations between the family and government representatives, Mugabe was buried at his family home in Zvimba.
The matter has refused to die.
Attempts are still being made to exhume his remains and rebury them at the National Heroes Acre in Harare.
The Lungu debacle can torch some diplomatic storm between Zimbabwe and Zambia if it is true that he held a Zimbabwean diplomatic passport at the time of his death.
What is not in doubt are two things: There was bad blood between Lungu and Hichilema and secondly, Zimbabwe administration supported Lungu during the last Zambian presidential elections.
The news of Lungu’s Zimbabwean diplomatic passport started filtering on Tuesday night ahead of the Zambian Attorney-General’s application to interdict Lungu’s burial in Johannesburg.
The news went viral on social media, but interestingly no local mainstream media picked up the matter.
Even if the speculation is wrong, there was a need for local media to have asked Zimbabwean officials directly if they had, indeed, issued Lungu with a Zimbabwean diplomatic passport.
The response could have affirmed the speculation or quashed it completely.
Zimbabwe has three categories of citizenship as clearly enshrined in the Constitution.
Sections 36, 37 and 38 of the Constitution clearly spell out that one can be a citizen by birth, descent or registration.
If proven true that Lungu held a Zimbabwean passport, then it has to be made clear how he was a Zimbabwean citizen.
In many countries across the globe, citizens by registration are not eligible to hold the position of the Head of State and Government.
Was it that President Emmerson Mnangagwa helped his friend with a Zimbabwean passport?
Was this to further strain relations between Mnangagwa and Hichilema?
All we know is Hichilema has in the past skipped Sadc meetings in Zimbabwe as tension simmered.
It should be noted that this has happened a few days after United States President Donald Trump has put Zimbabwean passport holders under stringent scrutiny to enter the US.
Trump argued that the Zimbabwean passport is being manipulated.
Journalists Maynard Manyowa and Hopewell Chin’ono have written about Zimbabwean diplomatic passports being dished out like confetti.
Manyowa posted that the South African authorities are spooked by the numbers of the red passport holders.
On the other hand, Chin’ono posted that wives and girlfriends of political elites and a number of unnamed female radio presenters as holders of diplomatic passports.
The Al Jazeera documentary — Gold Mafia — proved that some of the diplomatic passport holders like Uebert Angel were using them to smuggle gold to Dubai, since diplomats’ bags are not searched at airports.
The ministries of Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs should make a statement to Parliament on the numbers of Zimbabwean diplomatic passports and the names of their holders.
They should also speak to the process of issuing red passports and who initiates the process.
This would not be a witch-hunt by a process to plug loopholes in the system to bring back credibility to the Zimbabwean passport.
In the meantime, the ministry of Foreign Affairs or of Home Affairs should clear the air on the Lungu passport.
Leaving this matter to die a natural death is bad public relations.
Speculation and perceptions sometimes are stronger than facts and harder to shake-off if left for too long.
The Zambian Observer has reported that, indeed, Lungu held a Zimbabwean passport, according to court papers filed at the Gauteng High Court.
It further said no Zambian died at the hospital on June 5, except a Zimbabwean by the name Tendai Munyaradzi.
Whichever way the Lungu case will play out, Zimbabwe will come out with a number of blots.
Its Sadc chairmanship will end in August in a cloud of dishonour and embarrassment.
This can be avoided by speaking early and taking corrective action.
Zimbabwe can’t afford to remain mum.
It has to respond and respond clearly and with sincerity.
