With a view to guaranteeing public safety, the Provincial Government of Luanda decided to keep the Santa Ana Cemetery closed to the public, on Tuesday, 22nd, and keep it open for the exclusive funeral of the musician Nagrelha dos Lambas, who died last Friday. Monday, at the Dom Alexandre Cardeal do Nascimento Hospital Complex for Cardiovascular Diseases, a victim of the disease.
The information was made public this Sunday afternoon, in a Press Conference, by the deputy governor of Luanda, for the political and social sector, Manuel Gonçalves, in the sports citadel, where the artist’s funeral will take place.
The decision, according to the official, comes to avoid embarrassment, given the human frame that will be present in the cemetery to accompany Nagrelha to his last resting place.
Manuel Gonçalves clarified that the preventive security measures taken by the authorities are due to the size that the artist has reached and the estimate of more than 15 thousand participants on the day of his funeral.
The spokesperson for the National Police in Luanda informed, at the Press Conference, that Avenida Deolinda Rodrigues will be conditioned from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm in both directions, from the driver’s statue to the Viaduct of the Radio Patrol Unit, for which he appeals to the associations of taxi drivers, to reduce the number of vehicles in the perimeter of the Cemetery.
The person in charge guaranteed the creation of alternative routes at the level of the popular neighborhoods and Palanca, for car circulation.
The police guarantees that it has mobilized a staff of more than 800 agents to ensure the funeral of the “Estado Maior do Kuduro” this Tuesday, from Estádio da Cidadela, the funeral procession, in the district of Sambizanga, to the cemetery, where it will be buried around 11 o’clock.
However, he also informed that for the procession the National Police decided to control the number of vehicles, registering all that will be part of it. At the Santa Ana cemetery, the funerary vehicle, transporting Nagrelha’s body, will not enter the interior of the campo santo, making a march outside, to say goodbye to his family.
The Secretary of State for Youth, Boaventura Chitapa, said that the Angolan government supported the artist during his hospitalization and trip to Portugal, “but that all the help given was not enough to save” Nagrelha dos Lambas from the disease.
The director of the Hospital Complex for Cardiovascular Diseases Dom Alexandre Cardeal do Nascimento, said that, in June, when the artist was admitted to that health unit, the tests carried out indicated a complicated situation, which is why a second opinion was suggested, which led the artist to be evacuated to Portugal, where doctors confirmed the tests detected in Luanda.
Both Nagrelha and his wife Weza, he underlined, were informed of the seriousness of the situation, and of his own accord the musician decided to return to the country to be close to his family.
