Zimbabwean politicians, international dignitaries and thousands of citizens have gathered at a stadium in Harare to pay their final respects to the country’s founding father, Robert Mugabe.
The state funeral in the capital on Saturday follows a week of disputes between the Mugabe family and the government over where the former president will be buried.
Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years until he was forced to resign in the wake of a military coup in November 2017, died last week in a Singapore hospital aged 95.
The ruling ZANU-PF party and President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former deputy who helped remove him from power, wanted him to be buried at a national monument to heroes of the liberation war against white minority rule. But some relatives, expressing bitterness at the way former comrades had deposed Mugabe, pushed for him to be buried in his ancestral village of Kutama.
The two parties on Friday finally agreed he should lie at National Heroes Acre in Harare but the final ceremony would take place in about 30 days, once the new mausoleum was built for him there.
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