KZN health department denies ‘dead’ woman woke up in mortuary

The KwaZulu-Natal health department has rubbished a claim that a Durban woman woke up in a mortuary freezer after she was pronounced dead at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital in April.  

Constantia Junior Govender, 52, told a local newspaper she had blacked out on a road in Phoenix and woke up in a freezer in the mortuary.  

She told the Phoenix Tabloid she woke up next to a body and body bag. 

“The room was quite dark, I woke up from the corpse bed and wrapped myself up with the sheet that was used to cover me up. The deceased person and the body bag confirmed that I was at a mortuary. I was a bit disturbed by this and said to myself, I need to get out from here,” she said.

“I didn’t have my phone with me so I started screaming as loud as I could, but nobody came to my aid. I banged on the metal door and still couldn’t get anyone’s attention. I then took the corpse bed and started banging the door with it and I began to hear a sound of a walkie talkie and someone’s voice coming towards the room.”

Govender claimed her ordeal occurred in early April.  

The provincial health department said there was no record of Govender being admitted to the mortuary.  

“Our official records reveal that no such body was ever fetched from anywhere in Phoenix in April 2023, or at any other time. Neither was there a body that went missing after admission at any time from the Phoenix Medico-Legal Mortuary,” said departmental spokesperson Ntokozo Maphisa. 

He said during April 2023, eight Indian women were admitted to the facility.  

“Seven of them were identified and released to families. Of the eight bodies, seven were adults, and one was of an eight-month-old baby.  

 “The body that has not been identified yet is still at the mortuary, awaiting identification.”

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