January 16, 2003
By Sheree Russouw
THE identities of 140 people buried in two illegal cemeteries in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, are still a mystery, more than a year after their unmarked graves were discovered on state-owned, unused land.
Council officials from region 11 of the City say they are working with the local community to determine who is buried in the graves in Hospital Hill and Nareng. But because the land does not belong to the City, the bodies cannot be exhumed and reburied in City cemeteries until provincial authorities have given their approval, says Kabelo Mphafi, the operational manager for poverty alleviation in the region.
Louisa Magabane, the environmental health coordinator for the provincial Health Department, says she is not aware of the existence of the burial sites but her department will investigate the matter.
The graves are thought to be shallow and this may pose a health risk to the surrounding community as rain, for example, could bring the buried bodies to the surface. However, the assistant director of environmental health for the City, Nicky van Niekerk says, the graves are not health hazard yet as no bodies have been "exposed".
"It's not really our jurisdiction but we regularly send inspectors to check the sites, especially after it rains. We don't know how deep these graves are or whether the people are buried in coffins."
The two cemeteries are the only known illegal sites in Johannesburg, says Alan Buff, the director of cemeteries and crematoriums at City Parks. He believes that the existence of the graveyards follows a cultural trend whereby burial sites are situated close to homesteads and villages, especially in rural areas. "We have advised communities that they should not be burying people in this way and they should rather be burying them in cemeteries," he says.
Van Niekerk says that as HIV/Aids takes its toll on poor communities, people often cannot afford to pay the high price of burials. He adds that there are no death certificates, indicating the cause of death of the occupants of the grave. "We don't even know how these people died. A while ago it was even speculated that some could have been murdered. We don't know if they died of natural or unnatural causes."
But Mphafi believes that the community is the key to unravelling the mystery. "We are trying to speak with families so that we can begin to mark the graves and find out how these people died."
He believes the creation of the cemeteries stems from the reluctance among the largely poor community to be buried as paupers by the state. According to the city's draft by-laws, a pauper is classified as "someone who has died in indigent circumstances, or if no relative, welfare organisation, or non-governmental organisation can be found to bear the burial or cremation costs".
The pauper is buried or cremated according to the conditions deemed fit by the City. "A pauper can be anyone - it could be a millionaire who has died on the street who has no identification and no one has come to claim his body," adds Buff. "The city is responsible for anyone on the streets that has not been claimed."
Says Mphafi: "There is no agreement between us and the local community about paupers' burials. This kind of burial policy is not acceptable to most people, especially old people. They don't want to be buried like that. They have their own ways of being buried."
Mphafi hopes that a new coffin-making project in the region will encourage locals to bury their friends and relatives in cheaper coffins and in designated cemeteries. Now 15 jobless people are being trained to make the wood coffins, with the help of the Spoornet Khotso Community Project. "The aim of the project is to assist indigent people in the community to buy coffins. We're going to sell the coffins for R500, instead of the expensive price that people have to normally pay."
