In a development that has sent shivers of schadenfreude down the spines of legal scholars and necropoliticians alike, the earthly remains of a former Zambian president have become the subject of a custody battle so bizarre it makes the Coronation Street script meetings look like a symposium on nuclear physics. The dispute, which has now slithered into a Zambian courtroom, has prompted UK legal experts to rummage through the attics of jurisprudence for precedents involving disputed cadavers, a field of law one might call 'corporeal contention.'
Let us be clear: the man is dead. He is not merely resting, he is not pining for the fjords. He is an ex-president, bereft of life, and yet his family and the state are locked in a macabre tug-of-war over his decomposing husk. The family, one presumes, wants to bury him with dignity. The state, one suspects, wants to parade him around like a trophy in a glass case, perhaps to remind the populace that even in death, you do not escape the clutches of bureaucracy.
Enter the British legal eagles, who have been consulted for their expertise in 'dead celebrity litigation.' They cite a precedent so absurd it could only have been concocted in the fevered brain of a Victorian novelist: the case of the 'Duke of Wellington's Undertaker.' In 1852, the Duke's corpse was claimed by both his family and the nation, with the nation winning on grounds that the Duke belonged to the people. The body was then paraded through London in a funeral procession of such pomp and circumstance that it bankrupted the local hat industry.
But this is Zambia, not Victorian England. The precedent is about as useful as a chocolate teapot at a diplomatic banquet. The real issue here is not law but power. The state wants to control the narrative, even in death. The family wants closure. And the corpse, silent and rotting, is the unwilling pawn in this theatre of the absurd.
Meanwhile, the UK experts are probably billing by the hour, sipping gin and tonics in their oak-panelled chambers, musing over the finer points of necro-jurisprudence. One can almost hear them: 'Well, in the case of R v. Stiff, 1834, it was decided that a deceased person could not be held in contempt of court. However, in the case of the Mummy of Ramses II, the court ruled that repatriation was only necessary if the body could prove it had been stolen.'
It is all, of course, a load of old codswallop. The only precedent that matters is that dead men tell no tales, but they certainly can cause a lot of paperwork. And in the grand tradition of post-colonial chaos, the former president's body has become a symbol of a nation's inability to let go of its past, even when that past is literally stinking up the courtroom.
Here is a suggestion: bury the man. Do it quickly, before the vultures start circling both literally and metaphorically. Then, if you must, erect a statue, hold a memorial, argue over his legacy until the cows come home. But for the love of all that is holy, stop treating his corpse like a legal football. It is undignified for everyone involved. The family deserves peace, the nation deserves closure, and the corpse deserves to return to the earth from which it came.
But no. Instead, we have a legal pantomime, complete with learned counsel citing precedents about stuffed dukes and disembowelled pharaohs. It is enough to make a gonzo journalist weep into his gin. And believe me, I have wept a lot of gin over this story.
So here is my headline: Zambia, for the love of God, bury your dead. And UK barristers, for the love of billable hours, find something more useful to do. There is a world collapsing out there. Leave the dead to their slumber.
