People who ‘sleep’ with the dead
Strangers came to the door asking to see burial place of their relative
Mbuyiselo Mthimkulu’s shack is erected on top of a stranger’s grave. He “sleeps with the dead” and walks among tombstones daily.
The 48-year-old father of three is not fazed by the situation at Hlala Kwabafileyo (live with the dead) informal settlement in Tshepiso, near Sharpeville, in the Vaal.
Mthimkulu, who has lived in the informal settlement for the past eight years, said the first time he knew his home was above a grave was three months ago when strangers walked into his four-room shack and demanded to see their relative’s grave.
“I was shocked when people said they were here to visit their [relative’s] grave. I asked them if they could see it outside in my yard.
“They pointed to my bedroom and said ‘it’s here’. I trembled,” he said.
It did not take the family long to find the headstone of their relative underneath Mthimkulu’s bedroom carpet. “How do you sleep knowing there is a grave in your bedroom, I could not sleep for days.”
His 20-year-old daughter left the family home to live with her grandmother because she was scared knowing that they were “sleeping with the dead”.
While some would consider setting up home among tombstones with corpses underneath somewhat taboo, for residents of Hlala Kwabafileyo, the settlement is the only place they can call home.
At a local creche nestled among the tombstones, a group of children played, oblivious to their surroundings. “They don't know,” said Mthimkulu. The informal settlement has been around for over 20 years now. It first mushroomed when the government moved the community from Tshepiso Phase 3 to build them RDP houses.
Residents initially moved next to the cemetery, and only found out much later that the land they erected their shacks on is part of the cemetery.
The first group of residents to move there have since occupied the RDP houses and either sold or rented the shacks in Hlala Kwabafileyo.
“All we want is to move. Money has corrupted our people, our councillors are focusing on their own bellies, they do not care about us,” said 53-year-old Benmore Moeketsi who hails from Odendaalsrus in the Free State. Moeketsi has lived here for more than 10 years. '
“Ba phelang ha ba dule le bafu [The living don't live with the dead]. This brings bad luck on one’s life, graves are meant to be sacred [space],” said Moeketsi.
Most of the graves are of people who lived at Top Location, near Vereeniging, before the apartheid government moved them.
Christina Ntukuma, 68, moved to Sharpeville from Top Location as an 11year-old with her family. “People used to walk for long hours to come bury here, there were many graves here in the 1960s but now there are few left. There are criminal activities happening here and this place has turned into a space for drug users.”
Emfuleni municipality spokeswoman Anita Sehlabo said they planned to relocate residents into the township and fence off the cemetery by December.