Eastern Cape premier mulls 'ban’ on traditional burials

Funerals with fewer than 50 mourners have been allowed under disaster management regulations, but the axe could be about to fall.

Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane wants funerals banned after mourners from the Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State were blamed for driving up the province’s Covid-19 infection numbers.

His call to “temporarily suspend funerals” and adopt the age-old tradition of ukuqhusheka (private traditional burial) has been backed by the amaXhosa royal house and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA (Contralesa).

Lungi Mtshali, spokesperson for the co-operative governance & traditional affairs department, said the national coronavirus command council agenda for its meeting this weekend included a possible funeral ban, and an announcement would be made soon.

But cultural activist Nokuzola Mndende, director of Icamagu Heritage Institute in Dutywa, said the idea of burying people in cities and exhuming their bodies later for reburial could “invoke ancestral wrath”.

Mabuyane’s spokesperson, Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha, said: “Funerals are giving us big problems. Cars that are coming from outside the Eastern Cape, which are sometimes carrying corpses, have exposed our law enforcement and other people to infections.”

Xhanti Sigcawu, spokesperson for the amaXhosa royal house, said the pandemic was similar to a war.

“Because of this war situation with an invisible enemy, we think that it is a good idea for people to bury where they are for now, and later exhume,” he said.

“It’s not an ideal arrangement, hence we say it must be done as a temporary measure.” Sigcawu added that the government might have to help families financially because exhumation was costly.

Nkosi Mkhanyiseli Dudumayo, the head of Contralesa in the Eastern Cape, said the congress supported the funeral ban, and he suggested mass memorial services when the pandemic was over.

“We know this pandemic is not going to be with us forever. Those who feel strongly about having funerals or memorial services can always do so then,” he said.

Mtshali said the department of traditional affairs had received calls to ban funerals after it asked for representations following the easing of the lockdown to level 4. “It’s a very sensitive issue, as one has to strike a balance between ensuring that people are given dignified burials, and consider the safety of the nation at the same time, but it is something that we are looking into,” he said.

But Mndende said that most Eastern Cape people who lived in the Western Cape or Gauteng considered these provinces workplaces. “How can you ask people to bury their loved ones in a workplace … a place where there is no spiritual connection?” she said.

“In African religion, when we bury someone, we say let the bones rest and later communicate to the bones that have rested. This is the very reason why people bury their loved ones in their ancestral homes.”

Mndende said a better approach would be to tighten the regulation and management of funerals. “Government should make sure that there are dedicated testing centres for travellers who may pose infection risk to others,” she said.

“If travellers go for testing just before they embark on their journey and have an authentic certificate that they had just tested negative for Covid-19, I think it would address the issue of infections between the two provinces.”