Family denied opportunity to view son’s body

Vicky Somniso-Abraham

A Johannesburg Forensic Pathology Service (FPS) employee denied a Congolese family the opportunity to view the body of their loved one in a state mortuary.

Pastor Martin Munyangai, a Congolese immigrant, said his son Franck died after a fist fight with a colleague at his workplace on Sunday.

When Munyangai went to the mortuary, he was only allowed to view a picture of his son’s body on a computer screen, he said.

“They showed us the photo of the body on the computer screen. They said I must wait for the undertaker to take the body [ before] that I could see it. I said it would be better for me to see the body before the post-mortem, but the personnel refused. On the picture I saw there was some blood in the mouth and the lower lip was swollen. There was [a] dark mark on the left cheek.”

Asked for comment on Monday, an employee of FPS, Ayanda Meya said the family asked to view the body but that this had not been allowed because the doctors were still busy with the post-mortem.

“I have been doing this since 2013, and families can only have close contact with the body when they want to remove the body from the mortuary,” she said.

Otherwise, families were only allowed to view the bodies of relatives as pictures on the computer screen, “because that was standard procedure”, she added.

The family was finally allowed to view the body on Tuesday, after The Citizen had made enquiries concerning the case with the FPS and with the Gauteng health department.

Provincial health department spokesperson, Steve Mabona said that the supervisor of identification, Daniel Cherane and the FPS’s Meya had a discussion with the family regarding the incident.

They had since “apologised profusely” and their apology had been accepted.

The correct identification procedure was then followed and the body was shown to them – albeit through a glass window.

Cherane said that the family were satisfied by the subsequent handling of the case.

The body would be released after the appropriate arrangements had been made between a doctor and the family.

“It is very upsetting to find negative reporting of your facility through the media,” Mabona said.

“In this case, I would have appreciated it if the family had asked [to speak to] the manager at that specific stage, so that all misunderstandings could have been dealt with, eliminated and rectified.”

Police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Katlego Mogale said a case of murder had been opened following a fight on Sunday.

A suspect appeared in court in connection with the incident on Tuesday.