Thought of cremation ‘traumatic’ for many in Africa

KAMPALA: Wailing women, long speeches, livestock slaughtered for a feast. For many in Africa, funerals are multi-day gatherings and deeply traditional, with elaborate burial rites to emphasise the belief that the dead are not really dead.

Some Africans are uncomfortable with the rise in cremations, long considered taboo but a growing necessity as migration to cities is crowding out graveyard space and producing a landless generation without cash for a funeral.

Last month, authorities in the capital, Nairobi, urged Kenyans to accept cremation amid a shortage of space at the public cemetery in Lang’ata, where some bodies have been piled on top of others.

“We don’t have space,” top health executive, Hitan Majevda, said. “So cremation for us is the only option.”

The cremation last month of Kenneth Matiba, a former presidential candidate and once one of Kenya’s wealthiest men, has provoked more talk of the practice as a not-so-terrible choice in a socially conservative country of over 48 million people.

The local Star newspaper reported elders in Matiba’s ancestral home were “shocked” by his wish, and the provost of Nairobi’s All Saints Cathedral issued a statement calling the debate “more of a cultural and philosophical issue rather than a biblical one”.

Matiba was not the first prominent Kenyan to choose cremation. Nobel laureate and environmental activist Wangari Maathai was cremated in 2011.

Cremation is not controversial in the developed West. In the US, the practice surpassed the rate of burials for the second year in a row, a 2017 report by the National Funeral Directors Association shows. It cited the declining influence of religion as one reason for the change.

In Africa, officials promoting cremation cite more practical concerns: poverty and lack of space. It costs about $130 (R1 621) to cremate an adult at Lang’ata. In comparison, traditional funerals are big business with people expecting to be fed and entertained, often with alcohol, for several days leading to the burial.

Lang’ata crematorium was seeing a gradual rise in activity with at least one body cremated weekly, said Maina Nderitu, an official.

Dickson Kamau, who was at the crematorium to collect his brother’s ashes, said his family made the “traumatising” decision to cremate because of a lack of ancestral land. “We live in Nairobi and relocated a long time ago,” he said.

Most people in Kenya oppose cremation, often on cultural grounds, echoing feelings elsewhere in sub-saharan Africa where traditional beliefs are often respected even among those devoted to Christianity or Islam.

“You associate your family tree with where your ancestors are buried,” said Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a professor of history at Makerere University in neighbouring Uganda. “A burial site is like a physical site of identity, of tribal identity.”

In Uganda, funeral directors have put cremation on their brochures but find few or no takers.

“Cremation is a good idea as the world is changing and there is less time and money,” said Pius Setimba, a funeral planner at Kampala Funeral Directors.

“People these days don’t have time to attend funerals and it’s expensive to maintain a graveyard.”

Rajni Tailor, whose Indian Association Uganda owns Kampala’s only crematorium, said he had proposed a solution for those who wanted to preserve burial sites for generations: the partial burning of a body to preserve a few bones that would be interred in a smaller grave.

“The city councils have to convince them that cremation saves the land.” – Ap/african News Agency/ ANA