HARARE - While attendance at Monday’s funeral service for Vice President John Landa Nkomo at the National Heroes Acre was high; some close family members said they are disappointed they did not get any grief support at home from the national hero’s Zanu PF colleagues.

“The only person who grieved with us is Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, from the time he died, right up to the day he was laid to rest,” said a niece to Nkomo, who spoke to the Daily News on condition of anonymity.

“The rest of them, they just came the day the President came home, that was it. This was the Vice President, but he did not get any solidarity from his colleagues.”

She did not hide the pain of their feeling of abandonment.

“Why could all the top chefs attend Mujuru’s funeral, but they can’t come for us?” she asked.

However, Nkomo’s funeral at the national shrine was a public service.

For Zanu PF colleagues who have shared him for decades with the State, it was their time for their farewell, but they withheld support, she said.

Outside Nkomo’s Milton Park home, some reporters and photographers staked out positions hoping to spot Nkomo’s famous colleagues but there were none.

At his home, a few Zanu PF politicians came by to pay their respects, signing their names to a makeshift memorial at the funeral wake.

Party chairperson Simon Khaya Moyo had to cover-up for the appalling attendance by top Zanu PF colleagues in Bulawayo, and also claimed President Mugabe could not travel to the second city for the farewell journey ostensibly because he was too devastated with the death.

However, the general public overwhelmingly paid their respects to Mugabe’s lieutenant when his truck-drawn glass carriage was taken through Harare.

The carriage left from the funeral parlour before heading along the oldest neighbourhood in the capital, Mbare to Stoddart Hall and then making its way to the national shrine, where Zanu PF officials were out in full force.

Nkomo, who left behind several children with different women, was eulogised by a Christian minister Reverend Paul Damasane and several friends and family members, including his very old mother and son Jabulani.

The family member said the pain was too great after the home snub. All day over the weekend, the family maintained a vigil at Milton Park and throughout the day, relatives repeated the question.

“Why doesn’t anyone come to us? From Zanu PF, the government?” “If he were Mujuru, they would be here,” she said, summarising the sense that no one cares.

Zanu PF officials were yesterday locked in Politburo meetings to respond to the allegations. - Staff Writer