Smuggling dead bodies, drugs & groceries
THE Grim Reaper pays heed neither to time nor place of death.
For a world awash with increasing numbers of migrants, it is inevitable that more people are dying far away from their desired places of burial. Unfortunately, most people that start new lives out of their countries of origin hardly think about their fate should they die in foreign lands.
And when death strikes, it is friends and relatives that are often left with the headache of scraping together money for the body’s repatriation. With legal repatriation costing an arm and a leg, many have resorted to illegal means of ferrying the bodies back home, usually using public transport. Cross-border buses, haulage trucks and kombis, popularly known as omalaitsha, are used in these illegal activities. Drug cartels are also capitalising on this illegal movement of corpses, making it their new way of smuggling and transporting narcotics. An investigation carried out by The Sunday Mail Society has established that in an elaborate operation, corpses are being transported across the border as luggage. A recent funeral wake attended by this writer revealed sordid details about this act. Pharaoh Musana (28) was buried last week at his rural home in Mutasa, Manicaland. Musana was attacked and killed by robbers on his way home after work in the Johannesburg suburb of Berea. His body was left in a nearby ditch, where it was discovered the following morning.
His friends notified his family of his death.
However, Musana was not a member of any burial society and the young man had crossed into South Africa illegally. Musana’s lack of documentation made it nearly impossible to legally repatriate his body.
Smuggled for burial
Faced with a R15 000 bill required to repatriate his body legally, the only way to repatriate his body at minimal costs was through an illegal route.
The family had to bribe their way through customs.
A close family relative, who spoke to this publication on condition of anonymity, recounted how they took the body from South Africa to Zimbabwe.
She even revealed that all the paperwork was cooked.
“We had no money to process the papers and cover the transport of the body, so we hid his body in the bus trailer. The coffin was wrapped with a blanket to look like any other luggage.
“We paid R8 000 for the transport of his body. But when customs officials at the border discovered that we had a lifeless body without proper documentation, we bribed them as well and they let us through,” she said.
At the final destination in Harare, the corpse was handed over to a funeral parlour working in cahoots with the transport syndicate and the family of the deceased.
“We then took his body to his rural home, where he was buried.”
Smuggling phenomena not new
Cross-border bus operators who spoke to this publication at Harare International Road port said they are aware of the corpse smuggling business.
Purporting to be a client, this writer was referred to a cross-border bus driver who only identified himself as Chidodo (not real name).
Chidodo said he has been illegally carrying dead bodies across Beitbridge Border Post for burial in Zimbabwe since 2014. “It’s very expensive to repatriate a body to Zimbabwe, so many Zimbabweans approach us to carry their relatives back home,” said Chidodo, who said he is no longer afraid or even moved by the process.
He added that sometimes they squeeze the corpses inside the cargo they will be carrying, usually groceries.
“Relatives of the deceased approach us and normally the bodies are put in the buses (name supplied) during the night along N1,” Chidodo said, adding, “This is a secret known by the driver and the conductor only. To avoid panic, no passenger must know.”
Asked how much it costs to illegally transport a dead body to Zimbabwe, Chidodo said charges can be anything from R5 000 upwards.
Burial societies step up
Although many have resorted to illegal repatriation, not all Zimbabwean migrants leave these worries to relatives.
The high cost of transporting the deceased has pushed diasporans to start their own burial societies. Members from the same area pool resources and form burial societies. Some small businesses have also emerged to meet demand.
Godfrey Sagotora, founding director of Pamusha Funeral Services, said he opened the business in 2013 after noticing the challenges faced by foreigners in South Africa when comes to repatriating their bodies back home.
Sagotora’s company repatriates bodies to Zimbabwe weekly.
Proper repatriation
A survey by this publication showed that repatriating a body from a foreign country involves more than just the high costs. For one to be repatriated back to Zimbabwe, a lot of paperwork needs to be completed. A post-mortem report, death certificate, embalming or cremation certificate and an export permit are among the documents required to repatriate a person’s remains.
These documents would have to be sent to the Zimbabwean Foreign Affairs Ministry before the body can be repatriated.
Some Zimbabweans consider the process strenuous and too demanding, hence their preference to bypass official channels.
With as many as four million Zimbabweans living abroad, according to the International Organisation for Migration, body repatriation is big business.
South Africa to Zimbabwe rates range from R15 000 to R20 000 by road and R35 000 to R50 000 by air.
It can cost as much as US$7 000 to repatriate a body from outside Africa.