news.reporter1959@gmail.com

Zambia’s sixth former President Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu has died at a Pretoria hospital in South Africa today [June 5, 2025] aged 68.

The former President is said to have been receiving specialised treatment in South Africa at the Mediclinic Medforum Hospital in Pretoria. Dr Lungu’s daughter and Member of Parliament for the Chawama constituency Tasila Lungu-Mwansa confirmed the passing of the former President and thanked the medical staff of the hospital for the care Dr Lungu had received.

A family lawyer Makebi Zulu confirmed the death of the former President and indicated that family members had been informed. Dr Lungu served as Zambia’s sixth Republican President from January 26, 2015, to August 24, 2021.

A statement issued by acting president of the Patriotic Front Given Lubinda, for which Dr Lungu was president, said the details of the funeral arrangements would be communicated later once the family had gathered.

Zambia has always been a close friend of South Africa since the days an exiled ANC, the governing party and former liberation movement which was headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, since the early 1960s until the end of the apartheid regime’s rule in 1994 with the advent of the democratic dispensation and abolition of apartheid policies of racial segregation.