Graves cave in at Luveve Cemetery

AN elderly woman, accompanied by two young adults walks briskly into a section of Luveve Cemetery in Bulawayo, a little bit on the edge and sombre.

They continuously scan across the hundreds of graves as if they are missing something.

Their visit had been triggered by a message that was making rounds on social media, "Not group related but might help: Those with relatives who were laid to rest at Luveve Cemetery can u plse (sic) visit where your relative was laid to rest, izulu liwonile amangcwaba amanengi".

While the message carried some truth in it, it sent panic across the city and beyond borders as people in the diaspora who have their loved ones buried there could only imagine the worst after social media went into a frenzy saying the graveside had been turned "upside down" by the recent rains that fell in the city in the past week.

"Abantu bakhuluma okunengi, sizezibonela. We do not know how bad it is yet as we have not found the graves we are looking for,'' said the elderly woman who had come to inspect the grave of her son-in-law who was buried last Wednesday.

The family could not also locate the grave of another relative who was buried a year ago.

The young woman who was with the elderly woman spoke to the Sunday News sharing the traumatising experience.

"We saw the message and decided to come and check the graves as the rains had destroyed them. We came this morning to see for ourselves because recently, on Wednesday the 27th of December we buried the father of my children, same time last year we came here to bury my mother so I had to see for myself because some were saying bodies had been exposed by the water and were out in the open. So we just had to make sure all was well," she said.

What also further pushed them to come was an incident that occurred on the same day they buried her husband last week.

"We found a family of very few people covering up a grave and we asked ourselves why there were just a handful of people and where the rest of their relatives were. So, we then married the stories together with the one circulating on WhatsApp and we assumed it could be true that there was a lot of destruction going on and this other family had come to cover up the grave of their loved one," she said.

However, by the time the news crew left the cemetery the elderly woman and the two young adults had not located the two graves they were looking for.

"We cannot locate them, even the most recent one of the father of my children, when you are mourning you do not see many things, you will be very devastated and we seriously do not know where he was buried," she said.

However, she added that the message could have been circulated by a few individuals who found the graves of their deceased damaged and not the whole cemetery which sent people into panic mode.

"My aunt was already planning to travel to Zimbabwe from South Africa yesterday to see for herself, so we stopped her and said we would come here first then if indeed the soil had been washed away extensively she could then come and we perform our rituals and recover the graves once more. People have spent money coming to check only to find out that it is not how it was portrayed on social media, yes some were damaged but not all," she said.

Workers manning the cemetery said they had also heard the news of the "destruction" that had been done by the rains but said it was rather exaggerated and disturbing as people had gone into panic mode.

"Many people have come from abroad and all over the city have thronged this place to see for themselves what is happening. They got the message that the cemetery had been destroyed by the rains. The message caused panic. It is quite obvious that when it rains the soil that covers the grave loosens over time. Not as much as the social media message said," said another worker.

A large pool of water that had accumulated burst following the incessant rains, washing away some sand from graves.

"There was a dam-like feature where water had accumulated, it then burst after rains poured and that washed away some soil from the graves and not all as people said on social media. It is bad that people are saying a lot of negative things," said another worker who referred these reporters to the cemetery office to get more details.

A tour around the cemetery revealed a rather grim picture of collapsed tombstones, unkempt graves, broken name tags and footpaths that had been created on top of some graves.

The sandy soils that make up the vast area are easily washed away when there are heavy downpours and some graves that were not reinforced by stones and pebbles have collapsed over time leaving huge gaps and trenches on top of graves.

Many graves have collapsed and no one has bothered to repair them as both council and relatives have not paid much attention to them. Overgrown grass makes it difficult to locate some graves while some have no name tags for easy identification.

The city council, earlier said grave maintenance is their responsibility and is an ongoing exercise.

"The City of Bulawayo has 7 cemeteries. Three of the cemeteries are commissioned, namely Luveve Cemetery Extension, Umvutsha Park Cemetery and Lady Stanley Avenue which is reserved for senior citizens. The decommissioned cemeteries are four namely Luveve, Hyde Park, West Park and Athlone cemeteries. The City of Bulawayo conducts maintenance of the cemetery to ensure that the vegetation is not overgrown and that people have access to the graves. It is a challenge for the City to maintain individual graves due to the size and number of graves in each cemetery," said Mrs Nesisa Mpofu, the Corporate Communications Manager.

The council said it is faced with a 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.