The presidential feud that even death couldn't end

The personal has become very political in Zambia.

Mourning and the build-up to a funeral is never an easy time, but throw in the fallout from a long-standing feud between the country's two top politicians – President Hakainde Hichilema and his now-late predecessor Edgar Lungu - and you have an explosive mix.

The animosity was such that Lungu's family said one of his dying wishes was that Hichilema should not go anywhere near his body.

The row has scuppered government plans to honour the former head of state, created a distressing rift in the country and left people wondering how things got this bad.

Sunday was supposed to see the state funeral for the 68-year-old who governed for six years from 2015. But there will be no visiting dignitaries and the venue – a huge conference centre in the heart of the capital, Lusaka – will lie empty.

There was already a hint of possible trouble ahead immediately after Lungu's death on 5 June, in the video message shared by his daughter on Facebook.

Dressed in a thick, black jacket and holding back tears, Tasila Lungu said that her father had died in a hospital in South Africa where he was being treated with "dignity and privacy".

She rounded off the one-minute announcement saying that "in this moment of grief, we invoke the spirit of 'One Zambia, One Nation' – the timeless creed that guided President Lungu's service to our country".

To highlight the need for unity at a time when tradition suggested that the nation should naturally come together was a clue that all was not well.

And there was another issue: where was the president's announcement?

Ms Lungu's statement confirmed social media rumours of her father's death, condolence messages were already being sent, including from Kenya's president, but there was no word from Hichilema.

While independent outlets were reporting the news, the national broadcaster, ZNBC, remained silent.

Then, three hours after the daughter's post, Zambia's head of state shared his thoughts in a text post on Facebook. He made his own appeal for unity, asking people to "uphold the values of peace, dignity and togetherness that define us as Zambians".

Information Minister Cornelius Mweetwa dismissed concerns about the delay in Hichilema talking about the death. He told the the BBC that based on precedent it was not the head of state's role to be the first to announce the passing of a predecessor.

Nevertheless, Lungu's supporters felt that Hichilema's message of "togetherness" rang hollow.

Hichilema finally became president at his sixth attempt after soundly beating Lungu at the polls in 2021. It was their third electoral match-up but the enmity went beyond ballot-box rivalry.

The key to understanding this was the more than 100 days that Hichilema, opposition leader at the time, spent in detention in 2017, awaiting trial on treason charges.

He was accused of endangering the life of then-President Lungu after his motorcade allegedly refused to give way to the one transporting the head of state.

The charges were only dropped after the intervention of the secretary general of the Commonwealth.

Later that year, Hichilema told the BBC that he had been held in solitary confinement for the first eight days in degrading and inhumane conditions "without electricity, without water, without a toilet". He blamed Lungu personally for his imprisonment.

This was only one of 17 occasions that Hichilema was arrested. Supporters of his United Party for National Development were also harassed by supporters of the governing Patriotic Front (PF).

The 2021 election could have drawn a line under things.

Lungu, who had been rejected by a margin of almost a million votes by an electorate fed up with corruption allegations and concerns about apparent anti-democratic behaviour, went into political retirement.

But as disillusionment with the Hichilema presidency grew because of continued economic hardships, Lungu sensed an opportunity and announced in October 2023 that he was returning to frontline politics.

Soon after that announcement, Lungu was stripped of his retirement benefits and privileges by the state as he had returned to active politics.

This decision rankled with the former president and his family.

Lungu also complained of police harassment. At one point last year he said he was "virtually under house arrest".

In 2023, the police warned him against jogging in public, describing his weekly workouts as "political activism".

"I cannot move out of my house without being accosted and challenged by the police and driving me back home," Lungu told the BBC in May 2024.

In that interview, he also alleged that he had been barred from attending a conference overseas and from travelling abroad for medical treatment.

The information minister vehemently denied that there was ever a travel ban and described the idea that his movement was restricted in Zambia as a "fiction and a figment of the imagination of politically charged mindsets".

Mweetwa added that despite Hichilema's treatment when he was in opposition, he was determined not to do the same to Lungu.

There are also accusations that the president's anti-corruption crusade targeted those close to the former governing PF, including Lungu's family.

His widow, who continues to be investigated, has been taken to court and lost properties. Some of his children, including Tasila, have also faced similar treatment - they all deny wrongdoing.

Then at the end of last year the Constitutional Court barred him from running for president again, ruling that he had already served the maximum two terms allowed by law.

The former head of state was angry about the way he felt he had been treated.

"There was no love between the two men and [Lungu] was of the view that: 'I don't want people to pretend in my death that they cared about me when in fact, not'," the family's lawyer Makebi Zulu said.

Lungu eventually managed to get to South Africa in January, but Mr Zulu said that he was told by his doctors, after a series of tests, that had he gone for a check-up earlier, the treatment would have had a greater chance of success.

It was not disclosed what he was suffering from.

It was, in part, in light of this that Lungu said he "wouldn't want the current president to attend his funeral".

The government has rejected the idea that Lungu was stopped from going to see his doctors in South Africa.

Following his death, the family wanted to be in charge of the funeral arrangements, but the Zambian authorities sought to take control.

Despite the ill-feeling, last weekend it looked like a compromise had been reached and plans were made for a state funeral.

But relations once again broke down as the family said the government had reneged on the agreement after releasing a programme showing more involvement by Hichilema than had been planned.

In a message on Thursday, the president thanked Zambians for their "resilience, patience, solidarity and calmness during this time" but after doing "everything possible to engage the family... we have reached a point where a clear decision has to be made".

With that, the funeral arrangements in Zambia were put on hold and the national period of mourning was abruptly cut short.

The burial is now set to take place in South Africa and it seems unlikely that Hichilema will attend.

Zambians had been hoping for both Hichilema and Lungu to bury their differences, but this death and the events that followed, have denied people the closure and reconciliation they desperately wanted to see between the two.

Those differences have also denied many millions of Zambians the opportunity to mourn and pay their last respects to a man who once ruled them.