Zimbabwe’s ex-president Robert Mugabe buried in his village (AFP)

Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe was buried Saturday afternoon in his home village of Kutama (northwest) in the presence of several hundred family members and relatives, an AFP journalist reported.

Covered with the national flag, his coffin was buried in a dusty courtyard on his Kutama property after a sober ceremony in front of several hundred relatives.

Led by his widow, Grace Mugabe, entirely dressed in black, her family members threw white roses at her remains, the AFP journalist reported.

This funeral marks the end of an arm wrestling match that has been going on for weeks between the relatives of the former head of state and the government of his successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, around the place of his final resting place.

Robert Mugabe died on 6 September at the age of 95 in a Singapore hospital and was initially scheduled to rest in the National Hall of Heroes of the “Liberation Struggle” in Harare, as the authorities had hoped.

His family finally had the last word and announced this week that he would be buried in Kutama, about 100 kilometres northwest of the capital, Harare.

This battle once again illustrated the high tensions that have been going on for almost two years between the last followers of the former president and Mr. Mnangagwa.

Until his last breath, Robert Mugabe held a tenacious grudge against Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was placed at the head of the country after the resignation of the old president under pressure from the army and his party, Zanu-PF, in November 2017.

At the end of an undivided thirty-seven-year reign, Robert Mugabe left behind a country traumatized by repression and ruined by the economic crisis