Let’s cut through the pious wailing: when a nation can’t even bury its former leader without a courtroom spectacle, it’s not tradition—it’s a grotesque display of everything rotten in our political soul.

You call it grief. I call it a weapon. The court-ordered halt to the late Zambian president’s funeral is not a matter of due process, but proof that, for the political class, no life—even in death—is too sacred to leverage. Is this really about legal principle? Or is it the ultimate expression of cynical power, where the ritual of mourning gets held hostage by the very institutions that claim to protect our dignity?

Here lies the elephant in the room: Zambia, like too many so-called ‘democracies,’ has learned to make theater out of tragedy. The very judges who thunder from on high about the rule of law now preside over a circus where grief itself must stand trial. The crowd is left waiting—not out of respect for justice, but so that the puppet masters in robes and suits can scramble for every last ounce of control, as the stench of opportunism outpaces the scent of funeral flowers.

Let’s go deeper: Who benefits from turning a burial into a battleground? Certainly not the mourners, who are treated like pawns in a dehumanizing chess match. Not the family, whose private agony gets ripped open for public spectacle. It’s the politicians and power brokers—those who’d rather conjure ‘controversy’ and ‘pending questions’ than answer for their own failures. It’s the legal system, fattened by its own self-importance, always eager to prove its relevance, even if that means trampling basic human decency.

You want to believe your courts defend justice? Look closer. They’ll halt a funeral, but never the long procession of corruption, impunity, or mediocrity that parades under the flag. The public, meanwhile—lulled by the myth of moral authority—watches, clucks tongues, and sighs. Where is your outrage? Or is this the real national pastime: treating the dead as props for the living’s schemes, while pretending it’s all for order and honor?

Here’s what should haunt you: a society willing to insult its own dead for the sake of legal theatrics has lost the plot. If we’re waiting for permission to weep, to honor, to move on—ask yourself, who profits while the tears dry and the corpse cools?

Either we dare to admit it—or we bury not just a president, but our collective conscience, one halted funeral at a time.

This article was inspired by the headline: 'Mourners left waiting as court orders halt to former Zambian president’s funeral'.