A Chinese company has been chosen to construct the much-debated mausoleum for late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. It is not the first time a Chinese company has been tasked with building shrines for the region’s political leaders.
In the latest development in the aftermath of Robert Mugabe’s recent death, it has been announced that constructions will go on in spite of conflicting statements from the parties involved. It is previously known that Chinese company Shanghai Construction Group is responsible for constructing the mausoleum in Harare’s national memorial site National Heroes’ Acre.
The same construction company is currently involved in building the new parliament of Zimbabwe, a project directly funded by the Chinese government.
The mausoleum is not the first project of its kind undertaken by a Chinese construction company in the region. In Zambia, three former presidents have been laid to rest in individual mausoleums in Lusaka’s Embassy Park – at least two of which constructed by Chinese companies.
The first mausoleum erected in the park was dedicated to President Levy Mwanawasa and built by Yangts Jiang Enterprises Ltd. in 2011. The company, responsible for the construction of several public buildings in Zambia, shared owners with the infamous Collum Mine where a manager opened fire on protesting workers in 2010.
Jizan Construction Company was awarded the contract for President Fredrick Chiluba’s mausoleum, constructed in 2015 on then-President Michael Sata’s approval. Sata, who ran for president on a China-skeptic platform, would himself be honored with a mausoleum of his own in the park in 2017.
Robert Mugabe’s mausoleum is being built in Harare’s National Heroes’ Acre, commemorating the fallen under the Rhodesian Bush War. The memorial site was designed and built by North Korea in 1981 in a political prestige project.
In contrast, no political points have been made from China over the mausoleums built by various Chinese companies in Zambia and Zimbabwe in recent years, seemingly consequences of Chinese firms’ dominance in the local construction sector rather than motivated by big politics.
