Zimbabwe has declared Robert Mugabe a national hero, President Emmerson Mnangagwa says, and the country is to be in national mourning until the former leader is buried.
Mugabe, who ruled the southern African nation for nearly four decades, died in a Singapore hospital on Friday aged 95.
The guerilla leader’s death comes two years after the army brought an ignominious end to his iron-fisted rule.
“It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe,” a post on Mnangagwa’s official presidential Twitter account said.
In November, Mnangagwa said Mugabe was no longer able to walk when he had been admitted to a hospital in Singapore, without saying what treatment he had been undergoing.
Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent private media reports he had prostate cancer.
On leading Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation.
