The hymns of furious souls
Spades are being raised like fists in a unique community protest, but will the revolutionary impetus for free graves be forced underground, asks Paul McNally
IF YOU FOLLOW the Golden Highway out of Joburg and towards Vanderbijlpark, you’ll come to a large, open field next to the Sharpeville police station. The ground is hard, bare and dotted with scrub.
At 9am on August 24, people mobilised for the #Gravefeesmustfall campaign, riding the hashtag trend of the university #FeesMustFall movement. Cars from areas as far as Soweto pulled up to the station. People armed with spades held high in the air trooped across the field.
There was the occasional glance to assess the proximity of the cops as Bricks Mokolo, activist and head paralegal for the Orange Farm Human Rights Advice Centre, called for the residents to get their spades ready.
“Dig,” he yelled and they thumped the ground with their tools. The residents had several person-sized holes to dig.
Mokolo and his protesters were campaigning against the escalating prices of graves in the area by showing that they could turn any vacant plot of land into a graveyard – they didn’t need the permission of the government, or hefty bills, to care for their dead.
The mayor’s office of Emfuleni Local Municipality (part of the Sedibeng District) had received a memorandum, drafted by Mokolo, in June. Mokolo had had no response. Residents want free graves. They want grave fees to fall. But, Mokolo adds, they are ready to negotiate.
“People just don’t want charged.”
Mokolo started the #Gravefeesmustfall asinamali (we don’t have money) campaign after residents began approaching him – full of grief – to fight the municipality over going bankrupt from the unexpected costs. Accusations of corruption towards the municipality were mounting.
The cemeteries in Joburg are filling up with residents resorting to “recycling” sites. This is when the body of one family member will be replaced by another a few decades later. And the number of burial sites needed each year is increasing.
Almost 2 000 residents visited what was dubbed “Police Station Cemetery” (a sign written in marker pen was proudly erected) from the early morning to the late evening on that Wednesday.
The people danced and sang church hymns, emulating the beats of a real funeral.
The Sharpeville police officers did not oppose the digging, with a number of them offering their muscle to show their support for the campaign. The protesters’ message to the municipality was clear: the police are not at your disposal, they are on our side.
By the afternoon, a mock grave had been dug for the mayor of Emfuleni, Simon Mofokeng, to show him there was certainly land available for graves. He had announced there wasn’t enough space just before the elections in early August.
It is a striking image: an industrious group of protesters standing over a living man’s grave, complete with flowers and a tombstone flaunting his name. This was to single him out and make him realise his municipality is packed with residents furious with their situation.
“People are dying from the drugs, they are burying their kids and then they can’t afford the grave – it pushes people over the edge at their worst moment,” says Mokolo.
I have known Mokolo for years. I have seen him stand up for proper hospital care with regards to diabetes. I’ve seen him run workshops for the local police instead of treating them as the enemy.
He has built an activism empire down in Orange Farm, slowly encouraging people to stand up for their rights by educating them weekly on nearby community radio station Thetha FM (100.6).
He has been a partner of the Citizen Justice Network (CJN) since I started the organisation last year, training paralegals to be radio journalists and helping them put social justice stories on the radio and online.
I haven’t seen him this encouraged for a long while. His #Gravefeesmustfall campaign touches every person who intends to bury a loved one or be buried themselves.
The normal price for a grave has traditionally been between R400 and R600. Now, the official price for a standard adult burial for 2016/17, according to Joburg City Parks and Zoo, is R1 390. However, plenty of residents in the Vaal have complained of being charged double that.
Partly this is because Vaal cemeteries are becoming full, as is the case in Ennerdale. As a compromise, bodies from Emfuleni (including Sharpeville) are being carted off to neighbouring municipalities like Midvaal (north of Sharpeville, south of Soweto and also part of Sedibeng).
When you are buried in a place where you didn’t live “at the time of death”, you are considered a “non-resident”. This means a whopping charge for the family: a non-resident burial, outside your municipal boundaries, is R4 190. So, South Africans are not given adequate space nearby and charged thousands if they opt for a burial in a municipality up the road.
Olifantsvlei Eco Cemetery is in Midvaal. It is 400 hectares, Joburg’s newest cemetery and boasts gaps in the pillars of its surrounding wall so that small animals can pass through comfortably.
It is a thoughtful detail to comply with the environmental impact assessments done for the site, though perhaps an example of overkill when we simply need as much cost-effective, functional cemetery space as possible.
Other ambitions for the new cemetery: introducing game into the conservation area close to the stream and building an on-site florist.
Olifantsvlei has been in development for years and is hoping to reap a few top awards from the industry. It is the RollsRoyce of cemeteries, but is over 50km from the anger and basic demands that fuelled the “Police Station Cemetery”.
When you acknowledge the lack of options, it is no surprise that people are looking to illegal alternatives: on the Emfuleni website, there is a statement from June 2015 warning of burying in unofficial areas with the threat that the deceased’s remains could be lost permanently.
According to the municipality, as of last year, 629 undertakers are operating in Emfuleni and 40 of them are registered. An investigation uncovered 220 unregistered graves.
“We can’t even bury a dog in our yard. It is illegal,” says one resident of Orange Farm.
“We want to prevent money-making out of death. We can’t afford the high fees they are charging for graves. On top of it we still have to pay for tombstones and caskets!” says Mokolo.
He sees this as a land issue. He believes every South African should have the right to own a 1.8m rectangle of land in death.
CJN produces a weekly radio show around social justice on Thetha FM where Mokolo discussed the grave campaign on August 25. After Mokolo finished, the station was contacted by a member of a local burial society to say mayor Mofokeng would be making a statement in the next 24 hours. This deadline came and went. Municipal spokesman Thabiso Radebe said the municipality was aware of the grievances and Eric Tshabalala, MMC for Parks and Cemeteries, would issue a statement before the end of the week before last.
Mokolo staged a mass demonstration on Saturday in the Vaal. He wanted to link protests of 1984 against the hike of tariffs for municipal services, which left 30 people dead, to those against the current government. Estimates were that around 2 000 people attended. The protesters attached the 1984 demands of wanting to equalise the development of townships and suburbs.
By coincidence, the ANC also had a gathering linked to the September 3 theme and #Gravefeesmustfall organisers were worried people would go there instead. This didn’t happen. The ANC campaign supplied apples and oranges and one protester said “We don’t want apples. We need houses.”
Now activists no longer want to negotiate around a fee for the graves. They just want free fees to be implemented. Since the CJN radio show, rumours have been circulating that the mayor will lower the cost of graves in response to the protest, but Mokolo suspects these rumours have been generated to placate him.
“We will continue. I have seen no evidence of change,” says Mokolo. The grave issue is a jumping-off point. “We are fighting for basic services.”