City cemeteries in bad state

Cemeteries are important elements of societies' collective history, religious beliefs, cultural and ethnic influences, community origins and landscape design principles, Radio Dialogue reported.
Although just about every remainder from the beginnings of a town or city may be lost, cemeteries often remain as some of the last tangible links to the past.
Sadly this might not be so for the city of Bulawayo. The city's main cemetery, West Park is in serious neglect and does not show people who were once part of the city's development lay there.
Neglect and vandalism is what characterises the city's main burial site.
"West Park cemetery in now almost similar to a forest, it is so deplorable that a family can bury a relative there and struggle to locate the grave a week later," said one elderly woman, Maria Dube who was visiting her late husband's gravesite.
The graves at West Park are covered by tall grass and some are either caving in or breaking apart and this has exposed both the local authority and residents who have their loved ones buried there of failing to maintain the graves in a descent state.
The responsibility of maintaining  gravesites remains a contentious issue with residents saying the onus is on council, while the Bulawayo City Council says it is financially hamstrung and residents can chip and help council.
"I can not stand to see my husband lying in a bush, so from time to time I visit his grave to clear the grass because if I do not do that, his spirit will think I have deserted him," said Dube.
It is a known tradition that cemetery management is for the local authority and it involves the allocation of land for burial, the digging and filling of graves, and the maintenance of the grounds and landscaping.
On the other hand the construction and maintenance of headstones and other grave monuments is usually the private responsibility of families of the deceased.
Some graves at West Park have caved inwards owing to the rains that were experienced in previous months.
One of the BCC security officers on duty at West Park told Radio Dialogue that the state of the graves was not the city council's responsibility but that of the deceased's relatives who choose to ignore maintaining their relatives' graves.
"Once people put their deceased to rest, we see a few of them returning to maintain the graves, they have a role to play as well," said the officer.
Bulawayo councillors recently shelved plans to do maintenance work at all the city's grave sites owing to the rains and are expected to discuss the matter at the next full council meeting.
However, there are some few specific groups of graves within the cemeteries that are properly looked after. Such graves are of the Muslim community, whose graveyard is walled and gated.