Zambia declares national mourning for ex-president Edgar Lungu

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Lusaka, Zambia | AFP

Zambia on Saturday declared seven days of national mourning in honour of the country's former president Edgar Lungu, who died in South Africa on Thursday, the government said.

Lungu, who died at the age of 68, ruled the large but sparsely populated southern African nation from January 2015 until August 2021, when he lost to current President Hakainde Hichilema.

"The government of the Republic of Zambia wishes to inform the nation that President Hakainde Hichilema has accorded a state funeral to the sixth president, Edgar Lungu, who died on June 5," said the secretary to the cabinet, Patrick Kangwa.

The government announced that all flags would fly at half-mast from June 8 to 14 and that entertainment events would be suspended during that time.

Kangwa said that the body of Lungu would arrive in Zambia next Wednesday and that Belvedere Lodge in the capital Lusaka had been designated as the official place of mourning.

Zambia's former president Edgar Lungu, who held power for almost seven years until 2021, died Thursday in a hospital in South Africa at the age of 68, his party and family announced.

Lungu had been receiving specialised medical treatment in a clinic in Pretoria, the Patriotic Front (PF), his political party, said in a statement.

"My father had been under medical supervision in recent weeks," his daughter and member of the country's national assembly Tasila Lungu-Mwansa said in a video shared on social media.

"His condition was managed with dignity and privacy with support from all well-wishers," she said, without providing details of the cause of his death.

Lungu, a trained military officer and lawyer, became the country's sixth president in 2015 after the death in office of his predecessor Michael Sata.

While campaigning to be elected leader of the large but sparsely populated, resource-rich country, Lungu described himself as an "ordinary Zambian of humble beginnings".

He narrowly won the 2016 election against Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND) after a violent campaign that saw clashes between the two parties.

He pledged to unite the country and rebuild the economy.

On social issues, he revealed a conservative side, saying for example that gay rights were "foreign".

Born in 1956 in Chadiza in eastern Zambia, Lungu was from the minority Nsenga ethnic group, but he often described himself as a non-tribal.

"In private, ECL, as he is affectionately known, was disarmingly personable and very down to earth," Musa Mwenye, a former attorney general, posted on X.

He stepped down from the presidency in 2021 when Hichilema, the current president, won fresh elections by a landslide. He had said he planned to run for president again in the 2026 elections.

President Hichilema expressed on social media his "deep sorrow" at the news of Lungu's passing, calling Zambians to come together "above political affiliation or personal conviction".

Lungu had suffered from recurring achalasia, a condition caused by narrowing of the oesophagus, for which he had been treated in South Africa.