The family of Zambia’s former President Edgar Lungu says he will be buried in South Africa in a private ceremony following a row with the government over the funeral arrangements.

Late on Thursday, President Hakainde Hichilema cut short a period of national mourning after Lungu’s family refused to allow his body to be repatriated from South Africa as planned. His funeral had been set for Sunday in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.

The family now says it will announce later when Lungu will be buried in Johannesburg in “dignity and peace”.

It will be the first time a former head of state of another country is buried in South Africa.

In his will, Lungu said that Hichilema, his long-time rival, should not attend his funeral.

The government and his family later agreed he would have a state funeral before relations broke down over the precise arrangements.

“We wish to announce that the funeral and burial of our beloved Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu will take place here in South Africa, in accordance with the family’s wishes for a private ceremony,” family spokesperson Makebi Zulu said in a statement.

Mr Zulu thanked the South African government for “non-interference” and honouring the family’s decision and desire during “this deeply emotional period”.

In his address on Thursday, President Hichilema said that Lungu, as a former president, “belongs to the nation of Zambia” and his body should therefore “be buried in Zambia with full honours, and not in any other nation”.

However, because of the row, he announced an immediate end to the mourning period, saying the country needed to “resume normal life”.

“The government has done everything possible to engage with the family of our departed sixth president,” he said.

The national mourning period initially ran from 8 to 14 June but was later extended until 23 June, with flags flying at half-mast and radio stations playing solemn music.

President Hichilema and senior officials had been prepared to receive Lungu’s coffin with full military honours on Wednesday.

However, Lungu’s family blocked the repatriation of his remains at the last minute, saying the government had reneged on its agreement over the funeral plans.

The opposition Patriotic Front (PF), the party Lungu led until his death, has stood with the family over the funeral plans.

“The government has turned a solemn occasion into a political game,” said PF acting president Given Lubinda. “This is not how we treat a former head of state.”

Civil society groups have called for an urgent resolution of the matter, with a section of religious leaders saying the stand-off was “hurting the dignity of our country”.

“We appeal for humility, dialogue, and a resolution that honours the memory of the former president while keeping the nation united,” said Emmanuel Chikoya, head of the Council of Churches in Zambia.

Lungu, who led Zambia from 2015 to 2021, died earlier this month in South Africa where he was receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness.

After six years as head of state, Lungu lost the 2021 election to Hichilema by a large margin. He stepped back from politics but later returned to the fray.

He had ambitions to vie for the presidency again but at the end of last year the Constitutional Court barred him from running, ruling that he had already served the maximum two terms allowed by law.

Despite his disqualification from the presidential election, he remained hugely influential in Zambian politics and did not hold back in his criticism of his successor.

Controversial Kenyan televangelist Gilbert Deya, who claimed he created miraculous pregnancies, has died in a road crash.

Police told local media that Deya died on the spot on Tuesday evening after his vehicle was involved in an accident with a university bus and another vehicle near the town of Kisumu in western Kenya.

At least 30 other people were reportedly injured, including a person identified as his wife and a passenger in his vehicle, and 15 students in the bus.

Deya, who ran a church in London, rose to infamy in the early 2000s, following his claim that he could help infertile couples conceive “miracle” babies through prayer.

Investigations later linked his church to an alleged child-trafficking ring, leading to his arrest and extradition from the UK eight years ago after a decade-long legal battle.

He was acquitted of the charges in 2023 due to insufficient evidence.

On Wednesday, Siaya County Governor James Orengo said he had learnt with “deep sorrow and regret of the passing on of Bishop Gilbert Deya”.

He confirmed that the “horrific” road accident had involved a vehicle belonging to the county.

Photos shared online showed the mangled wreckage of one of the vehicles, which was completely shattered in the accident.

A former stonemason-turned evangelist, Deya moved from Kenya to London in the mid-1990s, where he founded Gilbert Deya Ministries, a registered charity with branches across the UK and Africa.

He was known for his charismatic preaching style and claimed to have been consecrated as an archbishop by a US evangelist in 1992.

His ministries later faced multiple investigations by the UK authorities for alleged mismanagement and legal violations, including selling olive oil which were falsely claiming to have healing properties.

He was once described by UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, then an MP, as a “modern-day snake-oil salesman who has conned and betrayed his vulnerable congregation”.

At his church, desperate women, some past their menopause and others who were unable to conceive, would be convinced that they would become pregnant through prayer.

But the babies were always “delivered” in backstreet clinics in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The prosecution said the babies were stolen from poor Kenyan families.

In 2011, his then wife Mary Deya was jailed after being found guilty of stealing a baby from the main referral hospital in Nairobi and falsely stating she had given birth to the baby.

Deya would later tell a court that they had divorced after she had been charged, saying she had “tarnished” his name.

Recent videos from the YouTube page of Gilbert Deya Ministries appear to show him announcing that he has a new wife, Diana Deya.

When the televangelist was asked in a BBC investigation in 2014 how the alleged “miracle” children had different DNA to that of their alleged parents, he said it was “beyond human imagination”.

“It is not something I can say. I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by a human being,” he said.

After his acquittal in 2023, Deya continued with his religious outreach programmes until his death, reportedly at 72.