Exiled former deputy cabinet minister Godfrey Gandawa asserted that Mugabe’s relatives’ seeming paranoia that drove them to secure the former president’s body with multiple concrete blocks now appears well informed.
Gandawa also said Chief Zvimba’s ruling ordering the exhumation and reburial of the late former president Robert Mugabe shows that President Emmerson Mnangagwa is behind the whole process.
Gandawa argued that had the chief acted on his power as a traditional leader, he wouldn’t have ordered the reburial of Mugabe’s remains at the National Heroes Acre but in Kutama. Gandawa wrote on Twitter:
The seeming paranoia of Mugabe’s family, in securing his body with multiple concrete blocks, now appears well informed as we witness Mnangagwa’s macabre and desperate attempt to take control of Mugabe’s corpse, and whatever they believe it has, two years his death.
Mnangagwa’s actions are an embarrassment to the nation and further reduce our estimation in the eyes of the world.
It is unheard of for a president, via his proxies, to harass the widow of his predecessor in a bid to access his remains for unclear purposes. It is a disgrace.
Speaking to City Press from the Mugabe homestead at Kutama Village in Zvimba during the burial in September 2019, Mugabe family spokesperson, Leo Mugabe revealed that Mugabe was buried in a tamper-proof casket. He said:
You know some people have an inclination for rituals. We are afraid that some people are after his body parts or even his whole body and they want to use that for rituals.
… the casket is tamper-proof and there is nothing unusual about that because we are trying to follow his last wishes which he confided to his wife before he passed on; he intimated that there were people who wanted to use his body for rituals.
Chief Zvimba, born Stanley Urayayi Mhondoro, gave an ultimatum until 1 July 2021 by which date both exhumation and reburial should have taken place.