Former President of Zimbabwe, late Robert Gabriel Mugabe will now be buried in his Zvimba village this weekend after the family rejected a state burial from the country’s government and ZANU-PF ruling party.

A statement issued by the country’s presidency on its Twitter handle, Thursday, said the government would respect the family’s wish, while assuring them of necessary support to give the late Zimbabwean leader a befitting burial.

The new development comes as the government began the construction of a mausoleum for Mugabe at the National Heroes Acre, a hilltop monument in Harare specially reserved for the country’s fallen heroes.

Late Mugabe’s spouse, Grace, who earlier agreed to the Zimbabwean government’s state burial plans, was said to have had a change of mind to grant her late husband’s “last wish.”

According to reports, Mugabe had expressly communicated his wish to be buried in his village beside his late first wife’s grave, while also barring the country's president (Emmerson Mnangagwa) and former ally — who toppled him in 2017 — from attending the private funeral.

Other considerations, a source said, were the cost of the mausoleum on the taxpayer; the time it would take to complete and shocking revelation that the ‘Presidential Mausoleum’ would contain graves of former presidents, not just Mugabe’s.

“President Mugabe did not want to be buried at the Heroes Acre to stop those who tormented him in his final days from pontificating over his dead body,” a relative said. “It would be unconscionable to have him buried by those whom he held most responsible.”

Mugabe, Zimbabwean first post-independent president who ruled the country for 37 years before he was ousted in a military coup in 2017, died in a Singapore hospital at the age of 95 on September 6.

A state funeral attended by current and former African leaders was held in Harare on September 14, but burial was postponed amid haggling between the family and the government over his final resting place.

http://igberetvnews.com/1026106/mugabes-family-reject-state-burial-opt-respect-last-wish/

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