PICS: Sad, lonely, reality of a pauper’s burial
Johannesburg - A funeral usually brings family and friends together to bid farewell to a loved one. A pauper’s burial, on the other hand, speaks of the cold reality of an individual who may have fallen out of touch with family and had to endure a path of loneliness before they died and still faced the cold after death.
On Wednesday morning, the bodies of 70 people laid in 70 chip-wood boxes were to be buried in a mass pauper’s burial. The City of Johannesburg admits that 70 is a big number, however, it is not unusual. The city morgues are constantly pushed to their limits.
The bodies are from several mortuaries around the city and all of them have gone through the prescribed waiting period before the preparations for a pauper’s burial begin.
Pictures are taken of the bodies during the post-mortem and identity marks like scars and tattoos are recorded. A file is opened containing the usual information such as the place the body was found, last clothes worn and fingerprint records.
Records are kept for future identification and for this reason the mass pauper’s burial was halted on Wednesday morning at Olifantsvlei Cemetery in the south of Johannesburg. It had to be 100% right, so more records had to be collected.
The air was filled with the smell of death from bodies that had been in morgues for months.
For each burial, four coffins are prepared, a prayer said over them and then they are lowered into the same hole. The process is repeated while a tractor-loader-backhoe (TLB) waits to close the holes. The following morning, the team was still busy burying more bodies.
If you fear that this could have happened to a loved one, please contact City Park Cemeteries for help. The graves are marked by a small marble stone with a number on it that is transferred to the files.
The design of Olifantsvlei Cemetery incorporates the section for paupers close to the general graves so it doesn’t appear so isolated.
The Star