Lungu’s Body to Remain in South Africa Pending Appeal

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The remains of former Zambian President Dr. Edgar Chagwa Lungu will not be moved from South Africa following the successful filing of an urgent appeal by his widow and family against a court order for repatriation.

The South African High Court, Gauteng Division in Pretoria, had earlier ruled in favour of an application by the Attorney General of the Republic of Zambia to return Lungu’s body to Zambia for burial. However, the family lodged an urgent appeal challenging the “whole judgment and order” issued by Judge Ledwaba.

Under South African law, the filing of a notice of appeal generally acts as an automatic stay of execution of a judgment, halting enforcement until the appeal is decided. This principle is rooted in Section 18 of the Superior Courts Act of 2013, which states that “unless the court under exceptional circumstances orders otherwise, the operation and execution of a decision which is the subject of an application for leave to appeal or of an appeal, is suspended pending the decision of the application or appeal.”

South Africa’s hybrid legal system—combining Roman-Dutch law, English common law, and customary law—recognises that while a notice of appeal typically suspends a judgment, exceptions can be made. In such cases, the winning party must demonstrate irreparable harm if the order is not enforced and that the losing party will not suffer irreparable harm if it is.

The stay in this case means Lungu’s body will remain in Pretoria until the appeal is heard. The BBC reports that private security services have been engaged to guard the remains at the morgue following repeated attempts to remove the body without authorisation.

Legal experts say it is unlikely the Zambian government will attempt to move the body before the appeal is resolved, as doing so could violate South African law. The Sheriff of the Court is not expected to sign any enforcement orders while the appeal is pending.

Yesterday, the Pretoria High Court in South Africa authorized and ordered Two Mountains, the funeral parlour keeping the body of the late former President of Zambia, Edgar Lungu, to immediately surrender his body to the Zambian government for repatriation and burial.

In a landmark judgment delivered in South Africa today, Judge Aubrey Ledwaba, sitting together with two other judges, ordered that Two Mountains should, upon being served with the court order by the Sheriff of the Pretoria High Court, immediately surrender the body of the late Mr Lungu to the representative of the Zambian government.

“The eighth respondent is authorized and ordered upon service of the court order by the Sheriff of this Honourable Court to immediately surrender the body of the Late President Lungu to a representative or representatives of the Zambian High Commission to enable the applicant to repatriate the body to Zambia for the purposes stated in paragraph 4 above,” Judge Ledwaba read the judgment in court.

Paragraph four of the judgment is an order that the applicant, which is the government of the Republic of Zambia, is entitled to repatriate the body of the late Mr Lungu for a state funeral and burial thereafter at Embassy Park in Lusaka.

The court further ordered and authorized that the former first lady, Esther Lungu and the late Mr Lungu’s family, including Mr Makebi Zulu, the late former President’s lawyer, should be present when the body of the late Mr Lungu is surrendered to the government of Zambia and repatriated for the state funeral and burial at Embassy Park in Lusaka.

“The First to Seventh Respondents are authorized to be present when paragraphs 4 and 5 of this order are executed, and an Aide De Camp, the late president’s physician, and two family members may accompany the coffin containing the body of the late President Lungu during the repatriation,” Judge Ledwaba said.

The judge added that there is no order as to costs, which includes reserved costs.

And the Pretoria High Court has ruled that the wish of the late former President not to be accorded a state funeral cannot override public interest.
Referring to the case of The People v Secretary to the Cabinet Ex parte Kaweche Kaunda (HP768 of 2021) [2021] ZMHC 6 (7 July 2021), Judge Ledwaba said public interest can override personal wishes.
He said in this regard, the court (Pretoria High Court) referred to the case of The People v Secretary to the Cabinet Ex parte Kaweche Kaunda (HP768 of 2021) [2021] ZMHC 6 (7 July 2021).
“That court stated that a state funeral is a public funeral ceremony, observing the strict rule of protocol, held to honour people of national significance. In addition to that, even if it was a personal wish of the late President not to be accorded a state funeral, such a wish must be overridden by the public interest,” the judge ruled.

Judge Ledwaba observed in his judgment that the late President Lungu, like any other President in established democracies around the world, deserves to be buried with the necessary dignity.
“This court cannot bar a President of another country from attending a state funeral,” he said in the judgment, noting that there is no doubt that the current President of Zambia would be involved in receiving foreign dignitaries as Head of State of the host country.

On the issue of whether Zambian or South African law is applicable, the Pretoria High Court considered the decision of Society of Lloyd’s supra; one has to determine a flexible and sensitive manner in which the legal system has the closest and most real connection to the dispute.
In legal terminology, ‘supra’ means ‘above.’

“The domicile, habitual residence and nationality of the late President and the family are connecting factors that would point to the Zambian law as proper lex causae,” he said.
Lex causae is a Latin legal term which means ‘the law of the cause’ referring to the law that governs the substantive rights and obligations of parties in a legal dispute, rather than the procedural rules of the court.

Former President Lungu died on June 5, 2025, at a private hospital in South Africa. He was 68 years old.

On 24th June 2025, Zambia’s Attorney General, Mulilo Kabesha, representing the government, launched an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court for an order to, among other things, seek that the funeral parlour (Two Mountains) be ordered to keep and to preserve the body of the late former President Lungu and not to remove or dispose of it in any manner pending the finalization of the application seeking its repatriation.

The urgent application followed the earlier decision by the Lungu family to bury the body in South Africa at a private funeral, citing some disagreements with the government of Zambia.
The following day, on 25 June 2025, the Pretoria High Court, pursuant to an agreement by the parties ordered that the funeral and burial of the late President Lungu be suspended pending the determination of the main application.

And speaking after the judgment, Mr Kabesha, said the ruling by the Pretoria High Court ‘makes good sense’ because the late Mr Lungu belonged to the Zambia.

The late Mr Lungu led Zambia as President from 2015 until August 2021.

60 COMMENTS

  1. Uko, the fight is still ON. Me not being a legal scholar, I wonder what flaws the Lungu family lawyers saw in the judge/judgement.
    So what if after this appeal, the judgement will remain same, Ushe bazatakata body ba family

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    • Every body including ECLs family has always wanted ECL to be burried in Zambia. It is just the government which abrogated the initial agreement and also the unwanted one who is pushing to attend the burial, complicating a very simple issue. Even just a diplomatic and PR call to the family ever since it happened has not happened, let’s see call records to say I tried and they did not pick my calls, let us respect the Family wishes. Body must be brought to Zambia and the initial agreement must be respected by the government

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    • Same here, no legal credentials but trust my critical reading and understanding. Therefore, my analysis is based on what’s right and normancy. The Lungu family, not including the respected elders but the widow and kids have chosen to be self saving in their act of defiance. They just keep on walking through mad and wants to drag everyone. Selfish acts are ignorant acts, stupidity is the loss of morality. They’re at a public loss fighting the government over no fight.

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    • Most likely the ruling will be the same. Unless the judge is too young to know that ANC lived in Zambia for decades fighting a freedom struggle so SA should nt disturb the two’s peaceful bilateral relationships

    • It is not the wishes for the family, it is circumstances beyond the family that has dictated. More over the head of state is not God that you can cry that he did not attend the burial,He is just human like me and you. There is not even a law compelling him to do that

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  4. Any where in the world, the final authority on any funeral is the family, whether the person was a head of state or an ordinary person, It is as simple and clear as it can be, and why was there no public interest to arrest those UPND cadres who threatened to circumcise ECL when he was alive. Public interest is only in his death. Just how?

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    • Which law gives the family rights over the state for a corpse ????

      There is no law that says the family has over riding rights…..

      We follow human decency and precedent on burials……..

      And precedent says all those who help office get a state funeral at embassy park………

      FWD2041

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  5. Why are we all hit up and concerned about all this The people of zambia are not involved as this is pure and simply between two people who harboured exreme dislike of eachother making both equally at fault

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  6. The words uttered by the late ECL‘s sister in court yesterday gives Zambians to speculate on whether there are wise people advising the late ECL‘s family or people are using this very sad state for political mileage. Both sides should stop beginning whatever they do with the Lord‘s prayer. There is no Christianity here. Remove it from the Constitution already.

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    • @Moyo, if that is really what your ears selectively heard, you have a serious hearing problem. You need to see an ENT doctor like yesterday.

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  7. This is an education for me about laws concerning dead bodies. I never knew there could be a possibility of expensive legal gymnastics about a corpse

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  8. It is shocking people thought the SA courts would grant the wishes of the family over that of GRZ………

    The SA government and people don’t want the late president buried in SA……

    They are saying SA is not a burial ground…..

    Can you want to force a burial where people don’t want you ????………

    Let the lungu family spend their money on lawyers , they seem to have inexhaustible amounts……

    bitterness, greed and wrong advice are the undoing of the lungu family………

    They will soon find out that the state in power is very hard to fight against, especially on matters of state protocols……..

    They will learn the bitter truth in the saying…

    …”he who runs away lives to fight another day…”

    FWD2041

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  9. What exactly does ECL’s family want? they dont want a huge public figure to be buried with full honours befitting a former head of state? They dont want him to lie in state?

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  10. Someone quickly inboxed me to try answer my humble questions but I think was already aware about the following: that Edgar Lungu once threatened to hang Hichilema and the matter kind of looked serious and several ambassadors had to plead with ECL. I am also reminded that while on a visit to Uganda Lungu made bogus comments about the fate of long time challenger to the dictator there. I think now i understand the position of the ECL family. They are saying whether he was president or not just leave the dead man to us.

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  12. @Muzambian the irony of all this. Is that aside from this article being written by Emmanuel Mwamba, the report by #BBC on the matter suggesting that “serveral attempts have been made to move the body from the funeral home”
    The inital court order barred anyone from going to the funeral home without the consent of the family. Why would government seek to do so? Now BBC seems to want to suggest that this is still going on. Yet the order by the SA High court as at yesterday gave Zambian High Commissioner to SA the right to do after serving the funeral home. Is it not a conicidence that Mwamba would have all these acts for an appeal that has not been filed in court to deter the government from doing its mandated act of repatriating Lungu from SA? What is the problem?

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  13. All this is because Edgar Lungu had visceral hatred for HH .

    Well , the wise judge has ruled public interests override such nonsense and God’s law of “love one another” has also poetically been applied .

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  14. Lets assume the Lungus won the case. Do they really expect the S. African govt to issue them a burial permit Not likely. Also, S. African activist groups have vowed to disrupt the burial if they tried to bury him in S, Africa. ECL has continued to be a source of confusion in Zambia even in his death. So sad. The judgment offers the family a save face way out. The family should ignore PF and other opposition political opportunists and put the man to rest here at home and the country can move on.

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  16. Not quite so…..Notice of Appeal does not mean an appeal has been lodged before the courts. No judge has had sight of that appeal

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    • What is with the Lungu’s body? Is there something Zambians should know? Who is there to say the truth minus politics.
      Some comments here are just about which finger feeds you

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  17. And we expect to develop Zambia….where are all these people seeking attention in South Africa getting the money…how do they earn mone…..where do they work…who’s sponsoring them…..????….

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  18. It’s really painful to see two sides fighting and
    No one trying to help sort out this problem
    Not even the church elders.How can this be
    A good way of respecting the dead?

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  19. 1. There cannot be a STATE FUNERAL without the HEAD OF STATE being present.

    2. Who is going to receive the attending Heads of State from around the world?

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  20. South Africans do not want Mr Lungu to be buried in South Africa. To them, he represents everything that is wrong with typical African Leaders.

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  21. @Spaka
    I was just wondering…so PF is hiding billions of Kwacha no wonder they can stay in 5 star hotels for 3 months straight and am sure Lungu bought alot of properties in South Africa with looted money

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    • Lungu has properties worth tens of millions in SA…….

      GRZ needs to engage the SA government and bounty hunters to reveal the extent of theft…….

      FWD2031

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  23. And other countries are busy with development…busy working on their economies…Bukina Faso is slowly becoming a new Rwanda….Botswana President is all talk no substance just like HH

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    • Your analogy of HH is very generous I’ve yet to come across a single person who doesnt agree he bitten off far more than he can chew.there will be no change to this

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  24. It is very difficult to convince a family misled and misguided by a PAPA that ECLs body will be used for ritual as mentioned by his sister. It is also very difficult to reason with a family that knows very well that the luxury they have comes from looted resources so the death of ECL exposes them. It is well now that the conditions the family is putting in place is to have all the cases dropped for the family and then ECLs body will be handed over to the state. This is imingalato from Given Zayelo, Nakachinda vuvuzela and Makebi the slef imposed family spokesperson.

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  25. Government should just leave it to the family to make own arrangements and pay all bills. It’s as if he’s South African

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  26. When it comes to useless things…the whole country abandon everything but when it comes to national development and keeping our surroundings clean no one comes forward to provide the service…..in Zambia one person die the whole country cry cry no work for 6 months….in China one person die no one cry work continue

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  27. I think HH should just declare 10 years of National morning and suspend next years elections….No work…No development for the next 10 years just crying for Lungu…Maybe this will make PF Bandits happy

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  28. I think HH should just declare 10 years of National morning and suspend next years elections….No work…No development for the next 10 years just crying for Lungu…Maybe this will make PF Bandits happy

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  30. The narrative has now shifted against the lungu family……….

    And will continue to shift…….

    They are fighting a losing battle……..

    The idea that their former president is to be buried in a foreign country as if Zambia is at war………..does not sit well with the majority of Zambians…….

    This family will end up looking ridiculous and unreasonable………

    Just watch them self destruct

    FWD2031

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  32. In my opinion I think the main issue here is that do we have a precedent where either the former head of state or seating president when they die one were buried outside embassy park if the answer is no. Then let us not waist time this case is going nowhere, we created a precedent ourselves already its now law finish.

    As long as we are using the English common law, this issue is done, embassy park is the final destination

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    • We also set precedence that all Presidents operate within the confines of the Zambian law. Tell that kaboke, kabwalala to move to State House.

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    • You are horrible and evil. Wiso na nanoko babwelelepofye. Limbi nabo bawelewele ngaiwe. Nshiku shobe wambeko ukupenda.

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  34. Only a SADIST and EVIL leader would enjoy seeing weak and frail women look like that. HH is not human anymore. This is not how we treat women in general and bamu kamfwilwa in particular. This is happening on a death that does not belong in his family. How evil can one be! Tata eeeh. Uyu muntu mubi.

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