Residents to take municipality to court over non-functioning crematoria
Fed up with mismanagement, and scandal - even sacrilege - around the Mountain Rise Cemetery and Crematorium, a group of residents now plan to take the Msunduzi Municipality to court over the matter.
For years Mountain Rise hasn’t had a functioning crematorium. To get around the problem, people have had to travel to Cato Ridge and Durban to have their deceased cremated, incurring significant costs and inconvenience in the process. It has been particularly painful for Hindus for whom last rites prescribe cremation and for generations have used the facility that was funded by the community.
In the foyer of the crematorium, two plaques recognise the rich history behind the facility that was built by the Veda Dharma Sabha in 1928 and was funded by donors and managed by the organisation until the early 1990s when a decision was taken to hand the asset to the new democratically elected and non racial town council. The second plaque recognises the financial contribution of prominent Hindu families - the Nankans and Hiralalls’ - who funded the construction of the extension of the assembly hall.
Given the current state of the crematoria, the Hindu community has questioned and repeatedly asked that the facility be handed back to them, as it has been plagued by mismanagement and scandal, including the use of a calf to test whether the incinerator that had been installed instead of a furnace, was operational. Cows are sacred to Hindus and the use of the animal was considered sacrilegious and deeply offensive. The municipality also battled to maintain adequate gas reserves and on at least two occasions the incinerators stopped working midway through cremations. The families of the deceased had to wait several hours at the crematorium with the half-cremated bodies until electricity supply was restored to complete the process.
Community newspaper The Public Eye and The Witness have reported extensively on the problems and efforts by the Midlands Hindu Society (MHS) and the Msunduzi Crematorium and Cemeteries Concerned Citizens Committee (MCCCCC), which was formed in 2012, to lobby for the facility to be handed back to the community to manage and run as a not-for-profit entity.
“MHS has been in discussions with the municipality via an organisation called Msunduzi Crematorium and Cemeteries Concerned Citizens Committee (MCCCCC),”SAID President of the Midlands Hindu Society (MHS) Ranjiv Nirghin.
“(It) included members of the Msunduzi Rates Forum that initially made progress with the upgrades of the crematoria and with the municipality buying new machines, creating the new slipway, installing a prayer place and a driveway canopy, new toilets, and washing facilities and upgrading the security including the fencing of the cemetery.” However, it was not long before problems arose once again.
“The new machines, fitted by the municipality, did not work properly from inception and had constant breakdowns and lacked service and maintenance,” said Nirghin.
“We asked for the crematorium to be privatised as we wanted to run it on a nonprofit basis for the benefit of the community irrespective of their religion, in a similar way that the Muslim Cemetery is run, “he said.
“The municipality decided that the only way that they could hand over management of the crematorium was via a tender process so that all interested parties could participate in the process. In the first round during 2021, MHS submitted an NPO tender under MCCCCC and we were not successful because we did not meet the requirements set by the municipality. The tender was re-advertised on the same terms in 2023 and other organizations tendered.”
Nirghin said the tender has still not been awarded and that the machines in Crematorium Two have not been repaired as yet.
“Crematorium One has not been functional since January and when it was functional it could only handle one cremation every 4 hours,” he said.
Nirghin said that the lack of crematoria services in Pietermaritzburg was “a violation of our Human Rights to practice our religious beliefs in performing the last rites of our loved ones.”
He said that the MHS was still in discussions with the Municipality to either repair the crematorium urgently or allow MHS to run the crematorium on a non-profit basis for the community.
Now, a community group is throwing its weight behind efforts to restore the service to the community, and is prepared to take the battle to court.
Former city council member Lucky Naicker and South African Minority Rights Equality Movement (SAMREM) chairperson Daleep Lutchman said concerned residents from various stakeholder groups met last Wednesday at the Eddels Sports and Social Club to reach a consensus on a way to get the crematorium functioning again.
Naicker started the meeting by declaring that Pietermaritzburg had a “crematorium in name only.”
Visibly upset and openly emotional about the contentious issues, various stakeholders spoke about the anguish the current situation was having on bereaved families - many of whom cannot afford to travel to Cato Ridge and pay the high fees being charged.
Given the exhaustive efforts already made, the concerned residents felt a court challenge was now the only route left.
Attorney Surendra Singh has agreed to offer legal guidance on the matter for free. He said he would not be filing an interdict as “the matter has been in limbo for years now”.
“It will have to be an application in the long form as it is not an urgent issue,” Singh said. He hopes that, after the filing of papers, the matter will be presented to a full bench and not one judge. He added that “a court application takes time as the High Court roll is full.”
“One has to secure an application date which should be about three months from now,” he said. He added that it was too early to say what the application would entail. Singh said that he had offered his expertise as “a functional crematorium is not a privilege but a right.”
All ward councilors and some officials from the municipality were reportedly invited to the meeting. However, when Public Eye attended the meeting, no municipal officials were present. Only councillors Garth Middleton and Rooksana Ahmed attended.
The municipality has not yet responded to requests for comment on the issue.