President Lazarus Chakwera is on Monday expected to lead the nation in mourning the late John Tembo who is scheduled to be buried on Wednesday at his home village in Dedza.
Tembo died on Tuesday this week at Lilongwe Private Clinic in Area 10 in the Capital City, aged 91.
In an interview yesterday, chairperson of the special committee for the funeral ceremony Albert Mbawala indicated that Chakwera is scheduled to arrive on Monday, October 2 2023 from the United States of America where he attended the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Said Mbawala:” The President will arrive Monday morning, on 2 October, and he will lead the nation in mourning.”
Mbawala said the late Tembo’s remains will be collected from the mortuary on Monday, and will lay in state at the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) headquarters in Lilongwe’ till 4pm, before being taken to his house in Area 10 for a vigil.
He added that on Tuesday there will be a funeral service at Malawi Square at Bingu International Conference Center (Bicc) in the city before departure for Dedza District.
Besides leading MCP as president and serving as Dedza South MP, Tembo held various prominent portifolios, including that of Reserve Bank of Malawi governor, Cabinet minister and chairperson of various companies during the one-party State under Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s rule.
Tembo joined politics in the 1960s and became a key figure in the one-party MCP regime which was toppled in 1994 after the country embraced democracy through a June 14 1993 referendum.
He is survived by four children and will be buried in his home village in Traditional Authority Kasumbu in Dedza. He retired from politics in 2013, when he handed over the mantle to Chakwera to lead MCP, after quitting the pulpit.
