Dabengwa to be buried in Ntabazinduna

THE body of late national hero and Zapu president Dumiso Dabengwa will now arrive in Bulawayo on Monday after family members and Zapu officials resisted government's move to ferry his body through Harare.

Dabengwa, who died in Nairobi, Kenya on Thursday enroute to Zimbabwe after undergoing a month-long treatment in India, will be buried on Saturday at a family graveyard in Ntabazinduna.

The body of the struggle icon was set to arrive in Bulawayo on Sunday aboard a South African Airways plane but did to come as expected, much to the disappointment of hundreds who thronged Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Airport to welcome their much-loved hero.

It also emerged that some family members - who included Dabengwa's widow - who had gone to South Africa to meet his body from Kenya, were informed their relative's body was not on the flight when the plane was mid-air.

Addressing journalists at the airport Sunday afternoon, Vice President Kembo Mohadi said that Dabengwa's body could not fit into the plane's cargo area.

H said Mnangagwa's government was making arrangements that his body be flown into Zimbabwe either this evening (Sunday) through any other aircraft but not directly to Bulawayo. They were trying to get him to come in a commercial plane via Harare and the Air Force brings the body to Bulawayo.

During a meeting, Dabengwa's family members and the Zapu leadership expressed reservations over government's move to take Dabengwa's body via Harare.

"Dabengwa's wife Mama MaKhumalo openly told Mohadi and his delegation that the option of taking her husband's body to Harare was unacceptable," said a source who was part of the tense meeting also attended by Defence Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, Zanu PF secretary for Administration Obert Mpofu and Patrick Chinamasa.

Addressing mourners at the late national hero's home, family spokesperson, Gibson Sibanda said Dabengwa's body will no longer go to Harare.