{"id":9267,"date":"2012-04-20T13:23:42","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T13:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=9267"},"modified":"2012-04-20T13:23:42","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T13:23:42","slug":"malawi-declares-public-holiday-for-mutharika-burial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/20\/malawi-declares-public-holiday-for-mutharika-burial\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi declares public holiday for Mutharika burial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> Malawi has declared Monday, April 23 a national holiday for the burial of its late president Bingu wa Mutharika, with seven African heads of state expected to attend.<\/p>\n<p>New President Joyce Banda\u2019s office declared April 23 a public holiday \u201cto give the former president a dignified and honourable state funeral and many Malawians an opportunity to attend the funeral ceremony\u201d.<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_8448\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/r-BINGU-WA-MUTHARIKA-large570.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8448\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/r-BINGU-WA-MUTHARIKA-large570-300x125.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Bingu wa Mutharika\" width=\"300\" height=\"125\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8448\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8448\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mutharika died of a heart attack on April 5<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nPresidents from Benin, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Zimbabwe are expected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can confirm that seven presidents from Africa will attend the burial ceremony,\u201d said local government minister Henry Mussa, who heads the funeral preparations.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of people this week queued to pay their last respects as his body lay in state and was moved to three cities across the country.<\/p>\n<p>Mutharika died of a heart attack on April 5 and his body was flown to South Africa for embalming.<\/p>\n<p>The 78-year-old was a former African Union chairman.<\/p>\n<p>His death was met with mixed reactions, as many people in the impoverished southern African state accuse him of poor economic policies and suppression of basic freedoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malawi has declared Monday, April 23 a national holiday for the burial of its late president Bingu wa Mutharika, with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[300,2131,466,258],"class_list":["post-9267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dpp-3","tag-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-funera","tag-joyce-banda","tag-malawi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}