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Just what macabre nonsense is this?

Opinion & Analysis
SOMETHING bizarre is happening. Chief Zvimba is allegedly threatening to have the remains of the late former President Robert Mugabe exhumed and reburied. Where? No one knows at least for now. This, according to reports, was because Mugabe’s initial burial was “improper” and not according to local “tradition”.

SOMETHING bizarre is happening. Chief Zvimba is allegedly threatening to have the remains of the late former President Robert Mugabe exhumed and reburied. Where? No one knows at least for now. This, according to reports, was because Mugabe’s initial burial was “improper” and not according to local “tradition”.

The chief, it has been reported, wants Mugabe’s widow Grace to bury the late former President in accordance with “our traditions and in Zvimba at a place designated by the family and his late mother”.

“You are facing charges of burying the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe at his homestead. This is unheard of in Chief Zvimba’s area. I want you to rebury the late President in accordance with our traditions and in Zvimba at a place designated by the family and his late mother,” read the chief’s summons.

The charge sheet even included the expected fine should Grace be found guilty: “These charges you are facing attract a fine of five cattle and a goat,” read the summons, which also warned that a ruling would be made even if Grace failed to turn up for the hearing.

This is the chief, who, along with senior government officials attended Mugabe’s funeral and failed to object at the time. So, what has gone wrong now that needs redress? The chief, a supposed relative of the late leader, denied that he sent the summons in the first place.

“I have not seen anything and I have nothing to say on that because I am in the dark. I am not aware of anything,” he said.

Others suspect a more sinister objective.

Mugabe’s self-exiled nephew Patrick Zhuwao sensationally claimed on South African broadcaster, Sabc that the former strongman’s ex-right-hand man and successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa was behind the crazy plot. Mugabe, the claim goes, was buried with a mystical sceptre that would give the current ruler commanding authority as a leader,

Zhuwawo alleged that President Mnangagwa told him in person that he believes that there were 16 traditional leaders who would effectively anoint the person that would be able to effectively govern Zimbabwe and he believed that Mugabe had a royal sceptre.

To add to the intrigue, the summons were delivered at Grace’s residence on April 29 by top police officers in the company of an aide reportedly from Mnangagwa’s office.

Government and party mandarins, of course, went apoplectic at the allegation that the current Dear Leader was an occultist who believed that the mystical sceptre would bestow on him all the grace of Mugabe’s famed anti-bookish economics. But none of them could explain why the top police officers, Chief Zvimba’s aide and an official from the President’s Office delivered the summons to Grace.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it will surely not end well for all concerned.