Lobby group Progressive Forces of South Africa is demanding an investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of former Zambian President Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
Lungu died at the Medforum Hospital in Pretoria on June 5 this year and it was reported at the time that he had succumbed to cancer.
At the moment there is a protracted court battle between the incumbent Zambian government and the late Lungu’s family, this as the Zambian government wants Lungu’s corpse to be repartited to Zambia for a state funeral, while the family wants Lungu to be buried in Johannesburg, South Africa.
PFSA spokesperson Bonang Seboloane led a delegation of civic members to the SAPS Gauteng Provincial Head Office in Johannesburg on Monday to hand in a memorandum of demands addressed to Acting Minister of Police Professor Firoz Cachalia and Gauteng Provincial Police Commissioner Tommy Mthombeni, wherein the Minister and the Commissioner are called upon to investigate Lungu’s death.
“There are allegations that former President Lungu didn’t die of poisoning; that he was actually poisoned and that the South African government had a hand in his death together with agents of the Zambian government,” said Seboloane.
“Member of the Patriotic Front in Zambia (Lungu’s political party)Raphael Nakacinda said Lungu was poisoned with the help of the South African government and Lungu’s daughter Tasila Lungu Mwansa has also indicated that her father was poisoned,” said Seboloane.
“We are asking the SAPS to investigate this matter so that we can clear our name as South Africans,” she said.
Be that as it may, Zambian Information Minister Cornelius Mweetwa is on record as having refuted claims that Lungu was poisoned by agents of current Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema’s government; insisting that the allegations are uncalled for and meant to cause alarm in Zambia.
At the time of his death, Hichilema and Lungu were at loggerheads over several issues which have still not been resolved to date.
In June the High Court in Pretoria ruled in favour of the Zambian government by handing down an order that literally stopped the Lungu family from burying their father in South Africa, and at the moment the family is still pursuing further legal avenues to bury their father in South Africa.
Copy of Memorandum:
