Graveyard sewage disgrace

Family forced to rebury mother

A GRAHAMSTOWN family plans to exhume and rebury their mother’s remains at a cost of R10 000 because the Makana Municipality is not maintaining the cemetery that has been flooded with sewage for years.

Thobeka Seyisi-Mgqawana, 51, said the 25-year-old facebrick grave of her mother Nomhase Elsie Seyisi had sunk about half a metre and its tombstone had disintegrated because the area had been flooded with sewage for more than four years.

The family’s demands to the municipality to have the cemetery cleaned up have fallen on deaf ears.

Seyisi-Mgqawana and her brother Vakele Ndibaza say they have been left with no option but to rebury their mother, even though it will be in a cemetery 10km from Thatha, the family’s traditional home for decades.

“We are very lucky we can still identify the grave. There are others that have been washed away altogether.

“Grass has already grown over the sunken graves. We can’t perform our rituals and connect with our ancestors,” Seyisi-Mgqawana said.

-Yoliswa Sobuwa