Wed 11 September 2019:
The body of Zimbabwe’s ex-president Robert Mugabe was flown out of Singapore Wednesday following his death last week, his nephew said, heading home for burial in a country bitterly divided by the hero-turned-despot’s legacy.
Mugabe, a guerrilla leader who swept to power after Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain and went on to rule for 37 years until he was ousted in 2017, died on Friday, aged 95.
His health deteriorated after he was toppled by the military and former loyalists in November 2017, ending an increasingly iron-fisted rule that sent the economy into ruin.
He died after receiving treatment at a Singapore hospital for several months, and a delegation including Vice President Kembo Mohadi travelled to the affluent city-state on a chartered flight to bring him home.
Early Wednesday a hearse transporting Mugabe’s body left a Singapore funeral parlour bound for an airport and accompanied by a police escort, driving past a group of waiting journalists.
A plane carrying the former leader and the visiting delegation departed shortly afterwards, his nephew Adam Molai told AFP.
“It just left now,” he said by phone from the plane as it took off, with the noise of the aircraft audible in the background.
The Zimbabwean delegation arrived on Tuesday and attended a private Catholic mass for Mugabe at the funeral parlour, officiated by a Zimbabwean priest.
On arrival in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s body will be taken straight to his village in Kutama, in Zvimba district west of the capital Harare, for an overnight wake.
On Thursday and Friday the body will lie in state at Rufaro Stadium in Mbare township in Harare for the public to pay their final respects.
The official funeral will be held on Saturday at the giant 60,000-seat National Sports Stadium in Harare and foreign leaders are expected to attend.
He will be buried on Sunday but the location remains unclear.
Mugabe’s family and Mnangagwa’s government are apparently at odds over whether it would be at his homestead northwest of Harare or at a shrine for liberation heroes in the capital.
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