Mourning must wait — an Eastern Cape family’s pain

It has been a week since Thamsanqa Booi’s sister-in-law died at a Fort Beaufort hospital.

Booi’s older brother, Max, is in a critical condition in an East London hospital, desperate to be released so he can bury his wife.

Since being told the news on Thursday last week, Booi, who lives in Port Elizabeth, has tried his utmost to get to Fort Beaufort to arrange a funeral for his brother’s wife.

Max, a diabetic, had to be admitted to hospital because of complications related to his illness. It was complications from the same illness that killed his wife, Nomsa.

Booi said his brother and his wife lived alone in Fort Beaufort while the rest of the family was in Port Elizabeth.

“I went to a police station last week and tried to explain my situation but the policeman at the front desk told me because of the lockdown there was nothing he could do — he told me to stay put.

“A friend and I came up with the idea of possibly sneaking out of Nelson Mandela Bay in the early hours of the morning but we were turned back at a roadblock in Kinkelbos, just outside Colchester,” he said.

Booi said what made the situation worse was that when there was a death in an African family, the family home could not be locked up, as was the case with his brother’s home in Fort Beaufort.

“It’s just my brother’s neighbours who are looking after things but the house is closed and it’s not right.

“When someone dies in a black family, everyone gathers at their house.

“We open our doors, gates and windows so that everyone knows we’re in a time of mourning, but for my sister-in-law [but] none of that has been done,” he said.

But there is relief in sight for Booi, who may now be able to get a permit, from a magistrate or a police station, to travel to Fort Beaufort to arrange the funeral.

In new regulations gazetted  on Thursday, co-operative governance minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has permitted the movement “between a metropolitan or district area, or province, by a person wishing to attend a funeral” during the 21-day lockdown.

The relaxation, however, is limited to the deceased’s spouse or partner, child, child-in-law, parents, siblings, grandparents and other people closely affiliated with the deceased.

Earlier,  Ward 22 councillor Nqabazi Zuma said she had tried to assist Booi but officials had told her there was nothing to be done.

“I went to officials and tried to explain the situation but they said there was nothing they could do,” she said.

Zuma said the family had come to an agreement to bury Nomsa after April 16, when the lockdown is scheduled to end.

However, because of uncertainty over whether the quarantine would be extended, they wanted to do it soon. 

Booi is one of many South Africans who, over the 21-day lockdown period introduced by President Cyril Ramaphosa to flatten the curve in the graph of coronavirus infections, had been trying in vain to be with their families after the death of a relative.

Just last week, the high court in Mpumalanga ruled against a Mbombela man who sought an order allowing him to travel to Hofmeyr in the Eastern Cape for his grandfather’s funeral.

Acting judge Henk Roelofse ruled that he could not accede to the relief the applicant sought because he would be authorising the applicant to break the law under judicial decree — which no court could do.

Nelson Mandela Bay municipality spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki said earlier that people’s movements had to be restricted in compliance with the lockdown.

“If we allow anyone to move from town to town or province to province, we’d be breaking the law.

“I think individual families will have to meet and work out a way forward,” Mniki said.

Some undertakers have, meanwhile,  complained of the added costs brought about by the coronavirus outbreak.

Johannes Fortuin, from Fortuin Funeral Home in Bethelsdorp said: “The lockdown has turned our industry upside down because moving just one body costs about R800 more in terms of the protective clothing we wear and change all the time.

“When we conduct funerals we have to sanitise the body, then sanitise those attending the funeral and also the house where the funeral is taking place,” he said.

Fortuin said families might also have to fork out extra for the bodies of loved ones to be stored because undertakers only kept remains for a week and could charge anything from R175 to R250 a day thereafter.

Brian van Willing, from Van Willing funerals in Uitenhage, said no bodies were piling up at his mortuary but many of his clients were upset about the regulations limiting the number of mourners at funerals.

Vera Vinqi,  of the Bay’s Funeral Practitioner’s Association, said part of the additional burden on undertakers was having to inform families of the new regulations in place.

“It’s things such as one person identifying the body, no viewing of the body during the service, no church services, the limited number of people, services being conducted in open tents and that catering for the funeral must be done in takeaway boxes.

“I just remind people that the responsibility to limit the spread of Covid-19 is on all of us,” she said.

In response to a query, provincial health spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said bodies were not piling up at state mortuaries.

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