Pretoria - The family of a woman who died last month was unsuccessful in their urgent legal bid for her body to be exhumed and reburied in Midrand, Gauteng, according to her wishes.
The mother of the woman launched the urgent application in the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, after the woman’s husband buried her remains about three weeks ago in a village in Limpopo.
None of her family attended the burial. They claimed that her husband whisked the body away from the funeral parlour and took it to Limpopo while the two families were embroiled in a dispute as to where to bury her.
The woman’s mother told the court that they wanted to rebury her in Midrand and they wanted to view her body prior to the burial to pay their last respects and to perform their ancestral rituals.
While turning down the urgent application, Acting Judge Y Carrim said his decision on urgency should not be understood to be condoning the conduct of the husband, who is an advocate.
“The first respondent’s (husband) conduct is certainly to be condemned. He does not deny that he arranged for the removal of the deceased’s body from Benoni to Limpopo under cover of darkness, with hardly a thought for
the feelings of his mother-in-law and his wife’s extended family…. His actions were cruel and inappropriate for a son, a father, and an officer of the court,” the judge said.
He added that the husband may have not broken any laws, but he certainly broke many hearts, including that of his own child, who was not able to attend the funeral in Limpopo.
“And in that he may have violated the Bapedi custom of Boloka ka Seriti le hlompho, meaning to ‘bury with dignity and respect’,” the judge said.
The couple’s matrimonial home is in Midrand, and after her death following an illness, her body was placed in the custody of a certain mortuary because her mother has had a funeral policy with them for the past 30 years.
The husband did not have a funeral policy for the deceased.
A family meeting was convened between the two families to discuss when and where the deceased would be buried. The mother told the court that, on her deathbed, her daughter told her of her wish to be buried in
Midrand. The woman’s husband denied this. The discussions between the families continued and tensions escalated.
The wife’s family hosted a memorial service for her on August 24, and had planned to bury her three days later.
The husband maintained that it was announced at the memorial service, by representatives of his family, that the deceased would be buried in Limpopo on August 26. Thus, he said, her family knew about the plans.
The funeral parlour told the family of the deceased that the husband wanted to remove the body and they urgently needed to know what to do.
The husband later went to the undertakers and demanded the body, which was released in his care.
The mother said a day before she planned to lay her daughter to rest, her family heard rumours that the funeral was under way in Limpopo, at the husband’s parents’ house.
In light of this commotion, the planned funeral service in Gauteng was cancelled.
The deceased was buried in Limpopo without her mother, her daughter or other family being present.
The husband said that should the family wish to visit the grave or conduct any customary rituals that might be required to address any customary oversight or to appease the spirit of the deceased, they are welcome to do so. He said she is buried and she should be left in peace.
The judge added that if foul play was the cause of death and the applicants wished to have an autopsy done to establish the cause of death, the court might have come to a different finding.
Pretoria News