Lungu’s Final Wishes or Family Fiction? Laura Miti Questions

Lungu’s Final Wishes or Family Fiction? Laura Miti Raises Doubts Over Funeral Narrative

Here is to you a bold and thought-provoking critique. governance activist Laura Miti has questioned the public narrative surrounding the late former President Edgar Lungu’s funeral arrangements, particularly the claims being made by his family in the wake of his passing. Her reflections, shared in a widely circulated statement, challenge the logic and cultural plausibility of some of the family’s assertions and has brought fresh debate about respect, politics, and truth in national mourning.

At the heart of Miti’s critique is the suggestion that the Lungu family has attributed peculiar instructions to the late President, allegedly given before his death in South Africa. Chief among these is the claim that Lungu explicitly instructed his body not be flown back to Zambia aboard a government aircraft, a demand that Miti finds both implausible and inconsistent with presidential dignity.

“Do you know how strange it is that anyone would bother too much about how their body will be transported after they die?” Miti asked rhetorically. “To leave strict instructions about which plane his dead body will use… That’s a really bizarre claim, you will have to agree.”

Miti also casts doubt on the family’s other reported claim , that Lungu did not want President Hakainde Hichilema to come near his remains. She questions the emotional logic behind such a directive, suggesting it reflects poorly on the former President’s legacy. “You’re saying that when a whole former President was dying, his thoughts were not on his wife, his children, or even God, but rather on his political rival?” she writes. “That his final moments were preoccupied with vengeance?”

Beyond the personal, Miti takes issue with what she sees as a contradiction in state precedent. Lungu’s government famously defied Kenneth Kaunda’s family to secure a state burial at Embassy Park for Zambia’s founding president. Yet now, the former President’s family appears to have insisted on undermining similar state protocols allegedly following his own posthumous instructions. “You are saying he used his last days and weeks to say ignore the court ruling I asked for myself?” Miti questions.

In a particularly emotive passage, she appeals to the late President’s widow, Esther Lungu. “When will poor Esther get to sit on a mattress to let out her grief and receive condolences?” she asks, referencing the traditional mourning practices that have been stalled by the prolonged funeral impasse.

While acknowledging that elderly family members have since emerged in the negotiations, Miti wonders whether they genuinely supported the decision to withhold the body from the state, or whether cultural expectations were overlooked entirely. “Do you know what a strangely willing-to-go-against-culture that makes the whole extended Lungu family?”

Miti’s critique walks a careful line between political commentary and cultural introspection. While she refrains from direct political attacks, her message is unmistakable: the story being told by the family may not only undermine Lungu’s own legacy but also strain Zambia’s collective capacity to mourn with dignity.

Her closing line lingers with intention: “Are you really claiming that this drama is all because EL hated HH so much that he was willing to turn his own funeral into a circus for the ages…? Rethink your story, mwe.”

As Zambia prepares to lay its sixth president to rest, such questions though uncomfortable are prompting deeper reflection on what it means to honour leadership, tradition, and the truth.

Since the Lungu family has opened the door to an interrogation of all things relating to President Lungu’s death – here are a few more questions:

Dear Lungu Family,

Do you understand how the things you have claimed, since President Lungu died, make little logical sense and are rather disrespectful to his own posthumous reputation?
Your main claim is – he spoke about how his remains should go back to Zambia.

1. Do you know how strange it is that anyone would bother too much about how their body will be transported after they die?? To leave strict instructions about which plane his dead body will use to go back home after dying abroad. To say – spend loads of money to pay for my body to not be put on a Zambian government plane. That’s a really bizarre claim, you will have to agree.
The other claim is be didn’t want the current President near his body.

2. You do understand, don’t you, that you are suggesting that, when a whole former President was dying, his thoughts were on his rival? Not on his wife, his children, grand children or the nation he led. Not even on the God he was about to meet. He was focused on the man he had a deep political rivalry with.
You are saying that President Lungu’s thoughts, in preparation for his own death, were full of hate and vengeance for a man who he himself had hurt deeply and who had also hurt him? His last thoughts were about how to get in one last stab??

3. The suggestion to Zambia is that President Lungu went to meet his ancestors, and his God, having elaborately planned a chaotic funeral for himself. One that he himself would not have allowed, if he was President. Remember his government went to court to overturn the wishes of the KK family for the first President’s burial. You are saying he used his last days and weeks to say – ignore the court ruling I asked for myself?

4. We notice that you have now found elderly family members. Congratulations!
But are you saying that they too agreed to follow the body to SA, to help keep it hostage. They did not want to sit at the funeral house in Zambia? Do you know what a strangely willing-to-go-against-culture that makes the whole extended Lungu family?

5. You do realise that you brought out the widow to sit there while it was being announced that her husband’s body will still not be buried, after days. Not buried only because the her dead husband hated the man who replaced him in office?
When will poor Esther get “to sit on a mattress” to let out her grief and receive condolences?
Let me ask this again, dear family. Are you really claiming that this drama is all because EL hated HH so much that he was willing to turn his own funeral into a circus for the ages, and left instructions to ensure that happened??
Hmmm. Rethink your story mwe. Anyway, kaya