Family nearly bury wrong body

A Bulawayo family on Friday came within minutes of burying the wrong body after a farcical mix-up at a funeral parlour.

Relatives of the late Terrence Moyo belived it was his body that they had collected from the Kings and Queens Funeral Parlour in Bulawayo's Kelvin North industrial area but it was not.

They were horrified when they got to their family home in Mzilikazi to discover that the body in the coffin was not Moyo's during body viewing.

Raymond Gombedza, Moyo's uncle, said: "We properly identified the body yesterday [Thursday] and when we came to collect it for burial today, Kings and Queens' driver told us not to disturb him as everything had been properly arranged.

"We drove to Mzilikazi where a service was held. But when the body viewing started, one of our relatives realised that the body was not ours.

"The body in the coffin was dark in complexion and putting on a ZCC uniform while ours was lighter and we did not expect him to be dressed in any uniform."

In shock, the family members rushed the corpse back to Kings and Queens as frantic officials from the parlour also worked the phones after realising the mistake when a family from Tshabalala â€" also preparing their own burial â€" arrived to pick up the body of the unnamed man.

Our news crew caught up with the Mzilikazi family conducting a second body viewing after finally collecting Moyo's body.
Last night, a Kings and Queens Funeral Parlour official blamed the mistake on Moyo's relatives, claiming some of them arrived drunk.

"We don't release a body without a family member identifying it and they identified their body before we released it with our hearse," said manager, Bekezela Khupe.

She added: "Surprisingly, the family only realised that it claimed the wrong body when it was almost done with body viewing after the parlour phoned to inform them to return the body.

"If they claim to be the ones who discovered that the body was not theirs, they're lying because we're the ones who contacted them to say they had gone with a wrong body.

"When they brought the deceased's clothes yesterday, they were drinking beer and we had to restrain them from entering with their bottles as another family was still conducting a funeral service.

"We'd have understood if the other family was the one complaining, not them. The other family remained calm after discovering this."
The company's operations managers, Ibson Ncube, said the Mzilikazi family could have failed to identify Moyo's body because the coffins were identical.

Innocent Moyo, another of the late Terrence's uncles, said the Mzilikazi house would be "cleansed of any evil spirits" following the incident.

We were unable to get a comment from the Tshabalala family last night. They had left the funeral parlour when our news team arrived.