Maintaining graves is not Bulawayo City Council's job

THE Bulawayo City Council has urged residents with relatives buried at different cemeteries in the city to constantly check and maintain the graves as it is not the duty of the local authority to do that for them.

Council made it clear that they were overwhelmed in maintaining the vast area the cemeteries cover and urged  relatives of the deceased to play ball after panic buttons were pressed last week with reports that graves were collapsing at Luveve Cemetery as a result of rains.

The comments by BCC come in the wake of some residents who were quick to blame the local authority for not doing enough to ensure the graves were taken care of.

BCC corporate communications manager Mrs Nesisa Mpofu said the council conducts the general maintenance of the cemetery to ensure that they do not look unkempt.

She said they trim overgrown vegetation so that people have access to the cemeteries.

"It is a challenge for the city to maintain individual graves due to the size and number of graves in each cemetery. The City of Bulawayo has seven cemeteries. Three of the cemeteries are commissioned, namely Luveve Cemetery Extension, Umvutsha Park Cemetery and Lady Stanley which is reserved for senior citizens. The decommissioned cemeteries are four, namely Luveve, Hyde Park, West Park and Athlone.

"The city faces shortage of human resources to cover all seven cemeteries at once taking into consideration that some cemeteries like Luveve are over 22 hectares in size and Athlone 17 hectares," she said.

She called on relatives to ensure their relatives' graves were taken care of.

The maintenance of graves has seen entrepreneurial residents such as Mr Shadreck Marara starting a grave cleaning services venture to assist those, especially in the diaspora, who cannot physically clean and maintain their relatives' graves.

Mr Marara said it is an important activity that communities should engage in wherever possible.

"Council does not clean up individual graves. They only cut grass, they do not go into it case by case and rebuild collapsed graves and fallen tombstones to mention a few. The families must do all other repairs that need to be done to the graves as a grave is a sacred thing, strangers cannot be seen doing things on someone's grave without the blessings of the family," said Mr Marara.

Mr Marara said failure to do personal grave maintenance was going to see the graves continuing to dilapidate with no one tending to them.

"It is a mess if you do not go there often to just check. I advise that you visit the sites twice a year, soon after the rainy season to get rid of weeds and also at the end of the year to see if all is well. But never neglect the graves of your loved ones.

Sign posts get rusty over time and you need to repaint them and have clear details. Thieves also steal these pegs that show grave numbers and resell them. So people must go and inspect if things are still the same," he said.

Mr Marara also said cloths and lace material that cover tombstones just before families do the unveiling of tombstones are also often stolen.

"People have lost respect for the dead. People also steal bricks that will be on other graves, quarry stones decorating the graves, all that is often stolen," he said.

Mr Marara said maintaining graves was very important in the African culture.

Historian Mr Pathisa Nyathi, however, said the physical appearance of cemeteries and graves was not too important to send people into panic.

"The truth is, the idea of maintenance was not there before and you should understand the nature of a human being, comprising two components, spirit and flesh. When I die what remains on the ground is the body, material component. But in Africa what is of interest to the deceased future generations is that which does not die and it is the spirit. It is the spirit that is looked after carefully, rather than the bones," said Mr Nyathi.

He echoed one traditional leader who said, "We do not go to the graveside, the people who visit graves are witches".

"He was right in a way, in that between the two (spirit and flesh), the one that we give upper consideration is the spirit and non-tangible, it is therefore remembered and recognised differently. This is through rituals like umbuyiso, after one year you are brought back into the home, this is taking care of the spirit. There is benefit in that, the other one (flesh) is no longer that relevant, as they cannot take care of you but the ancestral spirit will take care of me," said Mr Nyathi.

He said the ancestral spirits are the ones that must be taken care of and appeased from time to time, by informing them of what the living were doing and also seeking direction from them.

"Generally, in our context, we do not visit the graveside that often but we go emsamo and speak to our ancestors. Their care is more practical and yet intangible. But today things are all mixed up, the European way of life does not involve ancestral spirits, to them what is emphasised are the physical and material things. But because we have abandoned our African indigenous spirituality we now follow their (European) ways by emphasising material things," said Mr Nyathi.