THE Movement for Democratic Change prepared to bury its founding father on Friday as tributes poured in.
Gibson Sibanda, who succumbed to cancer aged 66 on Monday night, will be buried at his rural home in Filabusi, Matabeleland South, on Sunday.
MDC leaders Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara will give graveside eulogies to the former MDC vice president whose death has torched-off an outpouring of cross-political grief.
Sibanda’s body lay at a Bulawayo funeral parlour on Friday ahead of a church service at the Methodist Church in the city at 11AM on Saturday.
The body will pass through his Woodlands home at 3PM before the 150km journey to the village of Komcondo, Silalatshani, where his remains will lie in state before burial at 9AM Sunday, his daughter Thandi said.
Mutambara, meanwhile, has described Sibanda as an “icon”, a “great Zimbabwean” and a “great freedom fighter”.
“He was a unifier and a stabiliser in our party. He was a voice of reason,” Mutambara said of his deputy.
He expressed disappointment at a decision made by President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party to deny Sibanda national hero status.
Mutambara said at a meeting with Mugabe and Tsvangirai on August 4, they had agreed to “depoliticise” the process of according national hero status by initiating the formation of an "inclusive board" to oversee the process.
“We must be in a position to determine who is a hero in our country in a non-partisan manner so that we don’t devalue those we appoint as heroes, and we also don’t miss out on others who have the potential to be declared heroes and heroines in our country,” Mutambara said.
Zanu PF national chairman Simon Khaya Moyo sent a condolence message to the Sibanda family on Thursday, describing the former trade unionist as “a paragon of dignity, kindness and selflessness as he served his society and country in various roles throughout his illustrious life and career”.
Nomalanga Khumalo, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly said: “We are so pained because we have lost a man who was a father. When things got bad, he united the people.
"Whenever we had problems whether in the party or in our personal lives, we used to go to him to seek guidance.”