Four City Parks officials scurried around the paupers section of Olifantsvlei Cemetery near Eldorado Park, south of Johannesburg, in anticipation of an unusual mass burial yesterday.
They were preparing graves to bury 42 corpses that brought the M1 highway to a standstill when a trailer they were being transported in lost its wheels last week.
After public outcry over the manner the corpses were handled by the authorities, yesterday the group were given a dignified sendoff.
The bodies were transported to the cemetery by at least 10 Forensic Pathology Services vehicles and were accompanied by Gauteng health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa and members of her department.
On an ordinary pauper burial day, only a contracted private undertaker and grave diggers would be present.
But at Olifantsvlei, there were five priests delivering a sermon before coffins were lowered into the graves.
The names of the deceased were written with a permanent marker on some of the 42 coffins that were stacked up on top of the other in the 14 allocated graves at the cemetery. The coffins included those of stillborn infants.
A group of about 45 people huddled together as two coffins written "twins" - probably stillborns - were lowered to the grave. At the end of burial, 12 graves had swallowed three adult-size coffins each, while 26 baby-size coffins went into two graves.
There were even bouquets of flowers lined on top of the graves. Approximately 500 corpses have been buried in the pauper section of the cemetery since it was opened in February.
Only numbered stone markers spread out in the barren ground point to 140 graves where those who died unknown are buried.
MEC Ramokgopa oversees decent send-off of paupers
Four City Parks officials scurried around the paupers section of Olifantsvlei Cemetery near Eldorado Park, south of Johannesburg, in anticipation of an unusual mass burial yesterday.
They were preparing graves to bury 42 corpses that brought the M1 highway to a standstill when a trailer they were being transported in lost its wheels last week.
After public outcry over the manner the corpses were handled by the authorities, yesterday the group were given a dignified sendoff.
The bodies were transported to the cemetery by at least 10 Forensic Pathology Services vehicles and were accompanied by Gauteng health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa and members of her department.
On an ordinary pauper burial day, only a contracted private undertaker and grave diggers would be present.
But at Olifantsvlei, there were five priests delivering a sermon before coffins were lowered into the graves.
The names of the deceased were written with a permanent marker on some of the 42 coffins that were stacked up on top of the other in the 14 allocated graves at the cemetery. The coffins included those of stillborn infants.
A group of about 45 people huddled together as two coffins written "twins" - probably stillborns - were lowered to the grave. At the end of burial, 12 graves had swallowed three adult-size coffins each, while 26 baby-size coffins went into two graves.
There were even bouquets of flowers lined on top of the graves. Approximately 500 corpses have been buried in the pauper section of the cemetery since it was opened in February.
Only numbered stone markers spread out in the barren ground point to 140 graves where those who died unknown are buried.
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Ramokgopa told Sowetan yesterday that the procedures that were used by the private undertaker in transporting the corpses were not in compliance with the law and as a result, the department had had to adopt new regulations.
"The undertakers of today are our Forensic Pathology Services but we expect that the private funeral services will also be compliant because they operate under the same regulations that government departments operate under," she said.
Ramokgopa said the regulations would allow for human bodies to be treated in a dignified manner.
"We have finalised new guidelines and the training will be taking place with supervisors from mortuaries around the province and we want to extend this training to the private sector so that the partners we will be working with will also be compliant," she said.
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