Robert Mugabe, the deeply divisive former president of Zimbabwe, was declared a “national hero” by the ruling Zanu-PF party on Friday, as preparations for his funeral got under way in the nation he ruled with an iron first for almost 40 years.

The death of the former president on Thursday night in a clinic in Singapore marks the definitive end of an era in the former British colony.

Mugabe, who died aged 95, ruled Zimbabwe for close to four decades before being ousted in a military takeover in November 2017.

After decades of repressive rules, military coups, and conflicts in the country’s marginalized peripheries, the Sudanese people have come together and proven their resolve to break with the past and begin a new chapter of their nation’s history. Undeterred by a brutal crackdown, thousands of ordinary Sudanese have demonstrated for months, leading to the toppling of President Omar al-Bashir by a Transitional Military Council (TMC) on April 11 and the subsequent signing of a landmark Constitutional Declaration on August 17.

The appearance of Malick Jatta and five of his fellow Junglers at The Gambia’s Truth and Reconciliation Reparations Commission (TRRC) over the past three weeks has been the most gripping episode yet of the nationally broadcast hearings .

Jatta was a member of the Junglers, a death squad trained to do the dirtiest work of the country’s former president, Yahya Jammeh, whose abuses over 22 years in power are being revealed by the TRRC, which is being broadcast live into the living rooms of Africa’s smallest mainland nation.

“Former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir must face justice for crimes under international law, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, that he allegedly committed in Darfur while in power,” said Amnesty International ahead of the start of his trial on corruption charges on August 18 in Khartoum.