The widow of former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has appealed to the country’s High Court challenging an earlier court decision ordering the exhumation of her husband’s remains for reburial at a national shrine.
The former Zimbabwean strongman was interred in his rural village at Kutama in September 2019 despite attempts by the government to bury him at the National Heroes Acre in Harare.
When the dust appeared to have settled down over the dispute about his final resting place, a traditional chief from his home area ruled in May this year that Mugabe’s relative had committed a crime against local traditions during the burial of the late president.
He ordered Mugabe’s widow, Grace, to pay five cows and two goats as a fine of for improperly burying Mugabe and ordered his exhumation and reburial in Harare.
An appeal against the chief’s ruling by Mugabe’s children was thrown out by a Harare magistrate last month who argued that the ex-president’s children had no legal authority to challenge the exhumation of their father.
That prompted the latest appeal by Grace Mugabe.
Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe from April 1980 until November 2017 when he was removed in a military coup. He died in a Singapore hospital on 6 September 2019, aged 95.
JN/APA