IT WAS a graveside coup d état of note. Either she orchestrated it with the reporter who covered the event, or that was simply a good paparazzi shot.

The nation was mourning its beloved TV news anchor and all eyes were on the rightful chief mourner, the grieving estranged wife.

It was said that death had deviously snuck in and robbed her of a second chance to make up with the love of her life. The fierce matriarch had allegedly warned the woman who had been having an affair with her estranged husband to stay away from the funeral.

This woman, however, did not cower in a dark corner with her grief. A clear picture of her appeared in a newspaper as she braved national scrutiny and insisted on saying goodbye on her own terms. She was captured on camera displaying her last romantic gesture by throwing a flower into his grave.

She must have felt that she had as much right to bid her loved one goodbye as the estranged wife. Being separated from her husband meant the wife had lost her place in the pecking order. In love and in death they should be all equal in the eyes of the one they loved.

I am sure that picture elicited a lot of debates in trains and taxis. Le mmone mosadi ola, o na le sebete! (Did you see that woman, she is brave, she can be a midwife to a lioness).

Brave indeed to go against what some view as common decency by not placing herself in a situation in which she could make a scene. Or maybe she was betting on the fact that with all the media cameras present, the estranged wife could not afford to make a scene.

That picture got me thinking about what happens to the poor women who knowingly or only through death discover that they were going out with the same man? Who is accorded the status of chief mourner? No one wants to be in the unenviable position of deputy chief mourner.

Whose emotional "farewell to thee my love" message are they going to read if the Lothario was competing for the attention of many lovers?

Some women who are willing to look away when their partners continue their rampant cheating have found out the hard way that in death his infidelity will all come out in the open. It often comes to haunt them as a spectacle at the graveside with hidden children coming out of the woodwork.

These women, who are content that they are accorded the status of regte (the steady girlfriend) will go to great lengths to adorn themselves like peacocks as they compete with the other women their men cheated with at his funeral. The extravagant garb is supposed to communicate their upper-cast status to his chorus line of takeaways. As the steady girlfriend, the intricate fascinator and hat, with the big glasses and the designer dress is supposed to say she is the "Queen Bee" and the rest of his girlfriends are beneath her class. He may have had affairs with them but in the eyes of his friends and family she is happy that he loved her more.

There have been times when some girlfriends have turned funerals into fashion ramps as they all vied for pole position. Some would keen dramatically when the coffin was lowered to outdo their rivals and be noticed.

Once again it is sad that the men cheat and the women are pitted against each other.

Worse still is when the woman, whom the family and community knew, is embarrassed by her man's other lovers when she genuinely did not have a clue that her man was a double-crosser. To find out at his funeral that the man you thought was the one was actually a cheat, is cruel and turns that woman into an object of gossip and pity.

At one of those secret skull-and-bones AGMs they attend annually, where they churn out conspiracy theories to keep women in check, there are some cultural beliefs they promote that say the attentions of a dead man should never be fought over. They say to do so can only invite untold and prolonged bad luck.

Custom has it that any mistress who attends her lover's funeral will be afflicted with a mysterious disease called makgome. Its symptoms are said to be like the last stages of Aids plus Ebola. Some women have since caught onto the fact that these stories are just bogeyman tactics invented by cheating men themselves, who even in death, are still vain enough to want to preserve their reputation.

The moral of the story is that if you allow your man to humiliate you with affairs while he is alive, and you help condone his behaviour by staying and tolerating the nonsense, he will show you flames at his funeral and the whole world will be a spectator to a bizarre and solemn Cheaters episode.

• An opinion piece by Mapula Nkosi

l Follow me on Twitter @MapulaNkosi