Self-exiled Ntabazinduna Chief Ndiweni has supported calls for the exhumation of late Vice President, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo’s remains from the National Heroes Acre urging the government to respect the late revolutionary’s wish of being buried in his rural home.
Nkomo died on July 1, 1999, after a long battle with colon cancer, he was buried at the national shrine in Harare despite speculations that he preferred his rural home, St Josephs in Kezi, Matabeleland South province to be his final resting place.
“The process for the exhumation of Joshua Nkomo’s remains from (National) Heroes Acre should begin. No doubt permission will be obtained in the courts. That process must begin,” wrote Chief Ndiweni on the micro-blogging site, Twitter.
“There is no political capital being played here. Rather it is a moral one. A dying man’s last wish being honoured.”
Chief Ndiweni’s remarks come after late Nkomo’s son, Sibangilizwe who is the leader of ZAPU said in his address Monday during the third anniversary of Dumiso Dabengwa’s death that he wants to fulfill his late father’s wish and rebury him in their rural home.
Said Sibangilizwe, “I am one of those people that was tasked by my father to resist his burial at the national heroes acre. He made it very clear that he did not want to be buried at any heroes acre.
He said he wanted to lie beside his parents. This is a task that I was given and it lives with me day in day out. I was not able in 1999 to fulfill his wishes because I was in the minority against the decision to bury him in Harare. However, as an individual, I feel I still have that task, to fulfill my father’s request.”
Father Zimbabwe, as Nkomo was affectionately known, is buried next to his wife Johanna who died in 2003 and was also declared a national hero.
