Everybody thought Mr Mugabe would be laid to rest at the national Heroes’ Acre in the capital, Harare.
After all, Heroes’ Acre had been built by him and he had supervised the burial there of many of his former comrades in the liberation struggle, including Sally, his first wife.
Mr Mnangagwa started building an impressive mausoleum for the independence leader, but Mr Mugabe’s family would have none of it, not after he had been chased out of power and betrayed by his lieutenants.
The body, they argued, belonged to the family and after weeks of argument, the family won and Mr Mugabe, the undisputed hero of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, was buried in his home village, without any representatives of officialdom present.
Even Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s first post-independence president and the ultimate peacenik, could not find a resting place last year without a dispute breaking out.
According to the family, he wanted to be laid to rest next to his wife and not at the official site the government had designated.
For the moment, the family has not insisted on their rights and “KK” – as the late Mr Kaunda is affectionately known – is lying at the Embassy Memorial Park in the capital, Lusaka.
From exile to honours
These disputes about restless dead bodies are not new. Over here in Ghana we are well practised in such matters.
Our first leader – Kwame Nkrumah – died while receiving medical treatment in Bucharest in Romania.
He was first buried in Conakry in Guinea, where he had been living in exile. His body was later brought to Ghana. There was a state funeral in the capital, Accra, and he was laid to rest in his home village of Nkroful.
Years later, a befitting mausoleum was built in Accra and the body was brought and interred there.
Every once in a while, there are murmurs from his family in Nkroful asking for his body to be returned to them.
In 2012, our President John Evans Atta-Mills died in office and finding a resting place for him was not a straightforward issue.
Some members of his family wanted the body to be sent to his home village for burial, that argument did not find much traction at the time.
The first place where the government dug a grave for his interment was abandoned as unsuitable. He was eventually laid to rest in a park.
The understanding then was that the park would serve as the resting place for all presidents of Ghana.
Since then, another former president – Jerry Rawlings – has died.
