African Studies

ISSN: 0002-0184 (Print) 1469-2872 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cast20

Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of

Migrant Death in Johannesburg

Lorena Nunez & Brittany Wheeler

To cite this article: Lorena Nunez & Brittany Wheeler (2012) Chronicles of Death Out of
Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg, African Studies, 71:2, 212-233, DOI:
10.1080/00020184.2012.702966

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2012.702966

Published online: 03 Aug 2012.

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African Studies, 71, 2, August 2012

Chronicles of Death Out of Place:

Management of Migrant Death in
Johannesburg
Lorena Nunez ∗ and Brittany Wheeler ∗ ∗
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

It is unsurprising that a range of organisations have been created both by and for migrants, as
unique needs have arisen alongside the growing flow of migration from the African sub-continent
to South Africa in the post-apartheid era. This article investigates in particular the Johannes-
burg-based organisations that serve the needs of cross-border migrants and their families when
death occurs, facilitating the chance for a funeral and burial in the home country by navigating
the social, governmental, economic and spiritual channels necessary for determining the course
of a deceased migrant body. This article is concerned with the motivations, roles and actions of a
selected set of these organisations as they assist and prepare a migrant body for its posthumous
journey (including the factors that mediate against a ‘successful’ return of the body home). We
ask how these actors interact during this journey and what these connections and processes
might suggest to us about living and dying in Johannesburg as a foreign migrant. Rather than exam-
ining funerals and burials themselves, we go on an extended journey from the deathbed back to the
living migrant community, exploring the way in which death is managed in Johannesburg in the
interim period between death and burial. Such an exploration, we believe, will provide a view of
the lived experience of migrants that has been given neither sufficient attention in the literature
on death in Africa nor in the literature on migration.

Key words: South Africa, repatriation, death in Africa, migration

The culture says you cannot be lost . . . If you are buried in a different country, you
cannot go and show to a family member . . . this is your tombstone . . . this is the
grave of this family member. If you cannot do it for a particular individual who is
a member of the family, it means that the family is in a very bad position – Why?
Because people even in public, use [it] to insult the family . . . ‘We remember you
lost one member in, let’s say, South Africa, and you couldn’t even repatriate the
body back home here?’ We must be able one day to show his grave to whoever
wants to see it.1

With his explanation of the outcome of a failed repatriation, Marc Gbaffou per-
sonalises a common belief among African migrants; that a body should be buried
‘at home’. The importance of returning a body to its place of origin may lie in
having a tangible and local resting place for loved ones that the community
can also bear witness to, as Gbaffou relates. Another migrant, chairperson
Bienvenue Ingila of Congo Heart of Africa, calls this ‘crying twice’; the loss

∗
Email: lnuez2@gmail.com
∗∗
Email: brittany.lauren.wheeler@gmail.com
ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/12/020212 – 22
# 2012 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd on behalf of the University of Witwatersrand
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2012.702966
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 213

of life and the failure to repatriate as expected by family and community. Marc
Gbaffou and Bienvenu Ingila, however, are not merely immigrants in South
Africa who can articulate the existential loss a family in the home country can
suffer if they fail to repatriate the body of a deceased migrant. They are also
two important agents from among a large group of community organisations
in Johannesburg that provide practical recourse for the predicament of migrants
dying far from home. It is not surprising that a range of organisations have been
created both by and for migrants, as unique needs have arisen alongside the
growing flow of migration from the African sub-continent to South Africa in
the post-apartheid era. This article investigates the Johannesburg-based organis-
ations that serve the needs of cross-border migrants and their families when
death occurs, facilitating the chance for a funeral and burial back home by navi-
gating the social, governmental and economic channels that determine the
course of a migrant body following death in Johannesburg. These organisations
include national and faith-based organisations, burial societies and funeral
parlours, among others.
This article is concerned with the motivations, roles and actions of a selected set of
these organisations as they assist and prepare a migrant body for its posthumous
journey (including the factors that mediate against a ‘successful’ return of the
body) home. We will ask how these actors interact during this journey and what
these connections and processes might suggest to us about living and dying in
Johannesburg as a foreign migrant. Rather than examining funerals and burials
themselves, we will go on an extended journey, from the deathbed back to the
living migrant community in Johannesburg, exploring the way in which death is
managed in Johannesburg in the interim period between death and burial. Such
an exploration, we believe, will provide a view of the lived experience of
migrants, which has been given neither sufficient attention in the literature on
death in Africa nor in the literature on migration.
This article is primarily based upon the findings from two sets of semi-structured
interviews conducted between 2009 and 2010 by the authors as part of an exist-
ent research thread at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at
the University of the Witwatersrand. This initiative, Death, Dying and
Migration, aims to gain an understanding of the needs and diversity of practices
of migrant communities in South Africa as they concern the death and burial of
their members. The first group of ten exploratory interviews were conducted in
Johannesburg with members of governmental and non-governmental institutions
and civil society members who may be or may not be migrants.2 As a part of the
same research thread at ACMS, a selected second set of 12 interviews inform
this research, conducted as part of a master’s thesis3 concerning the comparative
international repatriation of migrant bodies across borders. Both interview sets
included input from migrants, community leaders, and those directly involved
in the death industry.
214 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

A Migrant’s Death, A Death Out of Place

Liisa Malkki (1992) wrote in 1992 that there are clear ideological rules, for many,
that concern the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ soil on which one should live their life and be
returned to or remain in death, as well as for the language in which we speak about
both. In highly publicised international repatriation cases concerning particular,
long-deceased African individuals, such as Sarah Baartman to South Africa or
‘El Negro’ to Botswana (Davies 2003; Crais and Scully 2009; Good 2002), the
language surrounding and the beliefs enfolding these African bodies out of
place were politically amplified by what many considered the obvious indignity
of Africans ‘at rest’ in museum collections in Europe. Such cases, however, act
almost in opposition to gaining an understanding of the everyday cases of death
and burial for the average African migrant who dies far from home. Further,
large-scale discussions of generalised repatriation in Africa tend to be located
in the arena of post-conflict repatriation of living refugees. Sources that do link
migration, death and repatriation in Africa might instead be found in a fleeting
reference at the edge of papers dealing with other topics, for instance in Hovil’s
description of meeting a group of Sudanese refugees who were in the process
of repatriating a body from a camp in Uganda, where there were no graveyards,
to Sudan, by bicycle (Hovil 2007:615).
There are, however, texts that link death and dying to migration (Mbida 2010;
Gardener 2002). Some consider the fact that migrants may wish to return home
when facing their own death in a foreign country to avoid the risk of not being
able to return home after death (Bemaruro 2010), which we will explore when
we begin to trace the preparation for death from the deathbed back to the living
community in the following section. Clark, Collinson et al. (2007) take death
and dying’s migratory ties further, back into the home country: they argue that
sick and dying circular migrants in South Africa who return home to rural families
contribute to a new burden of sickness and death for their communities. Most
directly, perhaps, Lee and Vaughan (2008) note in their historiography of death
in Africa how scholars of labour migration fixed a particular gaze on the concerns
held by migrant mine workers in South Africa. In the event of a mine-related death
on the job – the reality of which was made clear by the erection of cemeteries at
the mines – migrant miners considered both the practical barriers to and cosmo-
logical consequences of a ‘safe passage’ home.
Much of migration literature, unsurprisingly, concerns itself with the living and
their circumstances, drawing attention to the multiplicity of factors that may
increase migrants’ vulnerability. For migrants in South Africa, insecurity relates
to a range of factors such as difficulties in regularising legal status, accessing ser-
vices, living in deteriorated conditions and having to cope with unemployment and
underemployment (Vearey and Nunez 2010). This insecurity is compounded by
the pervasive climate of xenophobia, sometimes manifest in acts of violence
against immigrant groups, observed in the country in recent years (Misago,
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 215

Monson et al. 2010).4 In light of all that we know about migrants’ uncertain and
precarious lives, however, the literature has largely not engaged with death as
another common experience for the cross-border migrant. Death might well be
considered an occurrence or outcome that is intimately connected with other
vulnerabilities that have been so richly explored, and one that can illustrate
much about the lived experience of migrants. Such insights include the social
connections made in life that later assist in death management, the degree or direc-
tion of social or financial limitations faced when making decisions about the
deceased, and the ways in which both of these might indicate deeply-held
beliefs about where a body should be laid to rest.
The majority of cross-border migrant deaths in Johannesburg, whether the deaths
are from natural or unnatural causes, are considered out of place. The management
of death among cross-border migrants in South Africa involves concerted efforts
by living migrants to provide a ‘proper’5 funeral and burial including returning the
body to the deceased’s home. While this is not necessarily different from the needs
of internal migrants (Lee 2011), the management of a migrant’s death in a foreign
land often entails an active process undertaken by a community that shares these
concerns, pool resources and work to make repatriation a possibility. Katy
Gardener (2002) illustrates a system with similar motivations when discussing
the returning of migrants’ bodies from Britain to India, focusing especially on
the constraints placed on movement between countries.
Burials, in turn, reflect upon the complicated relationships between humans, land
and belonging, as Susan Reynolds Whyte (2005) shows in her study of burials of
women in Uganda who died of HIV/AIDS related deaths. She deliberates on how
the question of belonging materialises around the actual location of the grave.
Mbida (2010) reflects that for middle-class Zimbabweans in the Diaspora who
plan to be buried back home, the locus of a grave is determined by broader
political-economic, planning and health crises, and not actually linked to issues
of identity and belonging, as Geschiere and Gugler (1998) argued for the West
African context (Mbida 2010:145). Whilst local burials of migrants’ bodies may
be more frequent than desired, belonging is clearly an underling theme in
migrant’s imperative to return home to be buried.
Funerals in Africa, on the other hand, have been studied as events serving a mul-
tiplicity of purposes. These include assertions of kinship or local belonging, as
well as the underlying political meaning of these associations (Geschiere 2005;
Page 2007), the funeral acting as a marketplace for marriage arrangements (De
Witte 2001 in Mazucatto, Mirjan et al. 2006), and funerals as occasions meant
to encourage migrants living abroad to stay invested in their home towns. The
money spent on a funeral has been described as a currency that allows migrants
to participate in the local social and political life (Mazucatto, Mirjan et al.
2006) and one that acts as an important social stage on which social prestige
can be visibly proclaimed (Van der Geest 2000). Funerals in Africa often
216 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

involve excessive expenditure, to the degree that they may economically eclipse
other priorities (Van der Geest 2000), which seems to confirm community
investment in these events. Whilst the potentially grandiose nature of funerals
in Africa is often a focus of attention in the literature it is to a lesser degree that
the preceding stages of such events have been explored, especially in the case
of cross-border migrants.
The management of death as it concerns living migrants, internal migrants or
citizens has been studied in greater depth than that of cross-border migrants.
Some literature that focuses on burial societies in South Africa tends toward a
historical, economic and demographic description of these groups, that, while
insightful, does not put any particular focus on foreign nationals (Detscher Gen-
ossenschafts 2003; Schneider 2008). In her studies on death and funerals among
internal migrants in South Africa, Lee (2011:242) discusses how the embalming
of the body, performed by funeral parlours, enhances the mobility of the
deceased and mourners. Studies conducted by Van der Geest in Ghana (2006)
and by Page in Cameroon (2007) have focused on the role of mortuaries in chan-
ging the dynamic of the funeral, providing the possibility of storage at a cost; an
option that is primarily meant to give more time to prepare a grand funeral. Page
(2007), as noted previously, stresses the way in which well-off migrants living
abroad may finance mortuaries in order to be able to take part in local funerals.
This, however, only concentrates on the needs of living migrants. These cited
texts do not deal with the way in which African migrants who have died
abroad introduce cultural imperatives, directly or indirectly, into the organis-
ation of burials outside their home country.
In sum, while the existent literature on death in Africa notes some aspects of the
potential aftermath of migration or the failure to repatriate, how death abroad is
conceptualised, and the cultural importance of burials and funerals, it does not
examine in depth the actual process that might be used to manage migrant
death in a foreign country. Migration literature informs but does not suffice to
clarify how migrants imagine, anticipate and prepare for a death out of place.
In the coming analysis of the management of deceased migrants, the city of
Johannesburg will provide us with a useful lens to examine this lesser-known
aspect of cross-border migration in South Africa. Johannesburg – known as
Egoli or the City of Gold – is a preferred destination for migrants throughout
the continent and from neighbouring countries. While exact number of foreign
migrants in the country is not known, estimations suggest they are now between
1.5 and 3.5 million (Stats SA 2007), with 46.8 per cent of the total international
migrants in the country residing in the province of Gauteng. The majority concen-
trates in Johannesburg (SALGA 2011). This context therefore allows for an
exploration of the management of a migrant’s death in a location that acts as a
financial centre and a pole of attraction in the Southern African region.
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 217

We begin by examining negotiations to return home in the proximity of death.

These negotiations, as with those that follow after death has occurred, take
place based on the shared understanding that it is better to be buried at home
and with the awareness of the complications associated with a death out of place.
We then pay special attention to repatriating funeral parlours for the imperative
agency they provide in addressing the needs surrounding a foreign migrant’s
death. We lastly investigate the role of burial societies and national organisations
and their participation in anticipating or responding to a migrant’s death.

The Sickbed and the Deathbed

Before death there is often sickness, and therefore our journey from the deathbed
to the living community is served by taking an observational seat within several
institutions that serve ill migrants. Both the Ministry to Zimbabwean Immigrants
and Nazareth House in Johannesburg reveal the way in which the management of
death begins before an actual death. Their work provides not only a sense of the
motivation behind management, but also a view of the practical activities that
involve mediating institutions, families and the migrants themselves begin.
Danisa Khumalo from the Ministry to Zimbabwean Immigrants describes the type
of assistance they provide: ‘We do repatriation, but not of bodily remains . . .
mainly repatriation has been with people who are terminally ill, people who
came here [to South Africa] very sick’. When these Zimbabweans approach the
ministry for assistance, they are sent to a hospice, Nazareth House,6 located in
the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville. As Khumalo describes, once the health of
the migrant stabilises, negotiations for their return home begin:
. . . When they recover, knowing [that] most have terminal illnesses, we sit down, we
counsel them, we talk to people at home, and just to say, ‘Can something be done?’
Mainly because I think . . . we see that [for] some of them there is the possibility
that when they pass away they are here. It’s a big burden for families [to repatriate
a body] . . . it’s always very expensive. It means that families have to sell cattle,
they have to borrow, they have to be in debt two or three years just to get someone
home. That’s how much they are prepared to sacrifice to make sure you are home.

Khumalo recounts the increased sense of vulnerability migrants felt in 2008 as an

effect of the generalised xenophobic violence. The number of Zimbabweans
looking for assistance from the ministry to return home grew significantly at the
time. Short of resources, the organisation was selective in assisting migrants. As
Khumalo asserts:
. . . we have to take a specific group, and we need to look at their vulnerability, [it needs
to be a] good reason why we take them home . . . we help people who have [been]
referred to shelters, to hospices, we have been checking with them for some time.

The most important point that this selectiveness illuminates is the variance in the
levels of connectedness that migrants have in Johannesburg – to those that can
smooth their transition into the city, and also to those that can assist them when
218 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

things turn out badly or sickness or death come (including those dying from HIV/
AIDS). Khumalo describes who some of the lesser-connected individuals might be
in the context of the city:
. . . we are looking for people from [a] village, [people that] don’t have social net-
works. [People that live in the] streets, Central Methodist [Church], shelters. They
might have [had] a job and then lost it and then because of health status or failing
to work, there are many reasons that would give us the sense that they are vulnerable
individuals. They are lesser connected people. So they find themselves here alone.

In Khumalo’s words, ‘the best thing is to go home; the home has better social net-
works’. The Ministry to Zimbabwean Immigrants pays for the ticket to Zimbabwe
and organises the return with the assistance of sympathetic Zimbabwean bus
drivers, who he believes understand the importance of returning home, and,
perhaps even more so, practical matters, such as how to return a dying migrant
lacking proper documentation:
They take people with papers or no papers across the border and vice versa. It’s a
flourishing trade, so they don’t even check it. They [the bus drivers] understand,
especially when it comes to people who are sick . . . The drivers who are Zimbabweans
and so on, they have the same worldview as all. They understand the importance for
this person to go home.

For Benita Moyo, the social auxiliary worker at Nazareth House, the death of a
terminally ill and destitute migrant is especially problematic. Repatriating a
body is often not an option, given both the high cost and the possible difficulties
that may arise if the body is buried locally. Moyo shares the view that it is best for
terminally-ill migrants to return home while they are still alive. The illness itself,
however, particularly HIV/AIDS, may be a factor affecting whether the migrant is
willing to do so.
Some of them [the terminally-ill migrants], they run away from their homes, some of
them don’t want families to know about their status [HIV/AIDS], admit it. They hide,
they will tell you they have no one, so if something happens, we face a challenge. To
bury this person, what about if the family comes – they can sue us? We don’t have
anything to cover ourselves. And at the same time if we take [them] to [the] mortuary
the body is accumulating [may not be claimed for a long time with the associated costs
of keeping it at the mortuary], we are between. It is not easy either way.

Moyo further describes the variety of circumstances in which migrants find them-
selves, some of which make them reluctant to go back home. For the undocumented,
the homeless, or those who do not have families back at home, South Africa is an
appealing option, and one that may slip out of reach forever if they leave:
Those who don’t want to go home, they came from the streets, so they don’t mind
going back to the streets – they are used to that kind of life. They say, at least, if
they go home they can’t come back. That’s the reason that they don’t want to go
back, coming back [to Johannesburg] is the problem. You find that most of those
that want to go back, they have family . . .
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 219

When migrants do die in South Africa, the place of death matters. Whether this is a
hospital, hospice, home, or even public place (for instance, downtown Johannes-
burg’s Central Methodist Church) – it determines, in part, the way in which the
body will be prepared for death. Though these two institutions aim to manage
death before it occurs, they know that they may be unsuccessful, and in the
case of Nazareth House, they work directly with a local funeral parlour, Regional
Funeral. Much like Khumalo describes the sympathetic Zimbabwean drivers that
help facilitate the next step in death management, Benita Moyo describes this
repatriating funeral parlour as one that ‘understands their situation’ and can be
relied upon, even on weekends. From here, the body and those that assist it
begin navigating the difficult path toward burial in Johannesburg or repatriation
for burial at home. The funeral parlour, called upon once the death has occurred,
is the next prominent agent of death management, performing a large number of
services and illustrating with more depth the connections to be found between all
the agents that work to manage migrant death.

The (Repatriating) Funeral Parlour

Regional Funeral is one of the 11 known funeral parlours offering repatriation services
in the migrant dense inner city of Johannesburg.7 The repatriating funeral parlour, a
specific niche in the ‘death industry’, has emerged from the need to return deceased
migrants home, offering services primarily to African migrants or their families.
Parlour names like Wings of Deliverance and slogans such as ‘We fly human
remains worldwide’ and ‘We do funerals in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, etc’ painted on the
exterior wall of the funeral homes make clear these parlours’ specific role.
With small amounts of capital, and often run by foreigners themselves, funeral
directors such as Nkosinathi Kwanike Nare, or NK of NK Funeral Homes, use
the services of more established mortuaries and subcontracting transport services
to assist in the management of death, like those offered by Rapson, who carried
bodies across the border for NK until he created his own funeral home –
Rapson Funeral Parlour – building on his know-how of the repatriating business.
At other times, business skills are passed from father to son8 as is the case of Mas-
sasanya, who runs one of the oldest repatriating parlours in Johannesburg (his son
is the owner of Wings of Deliverance, another parlour in a different part of the
city).
In general, these repatriating funeral parlours follow the trend towards the commo-
ditisation of funerals observed in South Africa and the rest of Africa (Lee 2011),
and they do so by introducing marketing strategies specifically targeting migrants
and the repatriation of bodies across borders, such as; ‘free mortuaries facilities’
(Wings of Deliverance), or ‘food parcels’ (NK Funeral Homes and Flair) which
are sent home together with the coffin. Such strategies, along with the general
creation and maintenance of these businesses, illustrate the connections between
those that are managing the death of migrants. These agents can also be thought
220 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

of as having planned for the management before death, securing the appropriate
tools, workforce, and connections in the community that will help them operate
from the moment of death.
Among the repatriating funeral parlours there are also bigger and older businesses
that service a broader number of countries in Europe as well as the United States.9
Their clients are a wealthier segment of the foreign population. One of these
businesses, operating for over 30 years and initially serving the white population,
illustrates changes in the demand noticeable from 1994 onwards. As the political
system opened, economic migrants, refugees, foreign businesses and tourists were
attracted into the country10 and along with this population inflow the need for
repatriation increased.
In general, repatriating to neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland is done by road. Repatriation to further des-
tinations such as Malawi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zaire
or Tanzania is done by air and bodies are sent as cargo. Often, regardless of the
size, funeral parlours work with similar businesses in the countries of destination
so that once the coffin arrives, the local funeral parlour takes over.
The representatives of the parlours interviewed were very clear on who their cli-
entele were, whether it was primarily Zimbabweans, Mozambicans or another
composition of clients that they could report from most common to least. This
close relationship between funeral parlours and the community of migrants may
be related to the fact that the directors are foreigners themselves, as in the case
of Rapson and NK who are both Zimbabweans, or who have created strong ties
as Massasanya, who is South African and has been serving migrant communities
for years and understands migrants’ world views and needs.
Most of these funeral parlours expressed a clear commitment to the migrant com-
munity, providing external help and going so far as to arrange special financial
deals at crucial times. For example Regional Funeral assists Nazareth House by
burying migrants for a very low fee or keeping the body in their mortuary until
contacts with the family of the deceased migrant are established; Wings of Deli-
verance assists those who die at the Methodist Church.11 In describing this com-
mitment, NK, the director of NK Funeral Homes and a Pentecostal pastor speaks
about his business as a calling to assist the migrant community by providing a dig-
nified funeral, independently of the means available. One of his business partners,
also a pastor, speaks about how he became personally committed to provide
proper burials to Zimbabweans:
I could see that our people [Zimbabweans] are not being buried properly during funerals
and I could see so many things that were ignored by the undertakers because I was a
pastor then and I had witnessed so many funerals and I had noticed a lot of things.

This empathetic connection with the migrant community is manifest in the

multiple roles repatriating funeral parlours assume and the various degrees of
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 221

involvement they assume to provide a proper funeral and burial, one central func-
tion being the provision of time to the dead and to the living community in the
form of refrigeration services for the deceased migrant body.

The parlours’ role in lengthening the time between death and burial
The refrigeration system of modern mortuaries, and later on the embalming tech-
niques of funeral parlours, were the key technological innovations that extended
the time between death and burial (Van der Geest 2006; Page 2007; Lee 2011).
Lee (2011) displays how the embalming techniques of funeral parlours have pro-
vided time to South African internal migrants to manage funeral arrangements. An
average of three weeks between death and burial allows the body to be transported
home and for family members to reunite for the occasion. Similarly, embalming
and keeping the body in a mortuary for an undefined period of time is a key func-
tion of the repatriating parlours. This lengthening of time is crucial in that it
enables the family of the deceased to be contacted, for disputes to be resolved,
for decisions to be made on how and where to proceed with the funeral and
burial; for resources to be put together, while the funeral parlour assists in gather-
ing the necessary documentation. Rapson describes what his job entails:
You must embalm the corpse properly for three to six months so that it won’t rotten.
You must go to the home affairs and from there to your department as well as the
embassy for papers and all these bottle-neck bureaucratic ways are difficult.

As Page points out, mortuaries have become places wherein ‘the new experience
of contemporary migration, international capital, transfers and transnational
families intersect with universal and historic emotions of belonging and loss’
(2007:420). Aware of the need to provide the migrant body with a transitory
waiting location in its posthumous journey, Rapson positions his business in the
market of repatriation by offering free mortuary facilities.
L. And what do you offer?
R. I will offer them the coffin, papers, transport and how many days I am going to keep
your corpse without payment.
L. How many days is that?
R. We give people more or less two weeks for them to decide how and where to bury
the corpse.
L. And what if somebody asks if you can keep it for one month?
R. Yes we can do that because some people are from poor families.

Funeral parlours assume an economic risk when keeping the body in the mortuary.
This occurs when the resources needed are not gathered to retrieve the body or
simply when the family refuses to pay for its expenses. Rapson has encountered
this situation:
L. Does it happen often to you that people don’t come back?
R. Yes. I have got about four now. One is from Maputo and the other ones are locals.
L. Do the families know they are there?
222 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

R. Yes because they want to siphon the money from the funeral policy and they don’t
come back to you.
L. Have you given them the death certificate?
R. Yes with other documents. For instance, I collected a corpse last year till this year
August; the younger brother of the corpse collected the funeral policy and spent it.

On occasions such as the one just described, Rapson proceeds to release the body
for a pauper burial.12 In this way he exempts himself from assuming the ultimate
responsibility over the burial of the body. In similar circumstances NK would call
the family and begin to negotiate, encouraging them to contribute with whatever
is possible and, importantly, to be present for the funeral and burial which most
likely will take place locally.
Furthermore, on occasions when NK is requested to collect a body from a hospice,
he places the body in the mortuary for the necessary length of time, while he takes
on the task of locating the relatives of the deceased migrant across the border, until
a proper funeral can take place. These two cases show differences in the degree of
responsibility that repatriating funeral parlours may assume over the body of a
deceased migrant. Yet, while in general the lengthening of ‘time’ allows for the
organisation of burials, it also creates an opportunity for something in the
process to go wrong, such as the embezzlement of funeral policy payouts. Thus,
‘time’ may be a double-edged sword for both migrant families and entrepreneurs,
both a blessing and a risk.

The role of parlours as cultural mediators

Both NK and Massasanya act as cultural mediators in their various capacities.
Massasanya employs Zimbabwean drivers that have both a cultural understanding
of the need for repatriation and knowledge of how to transport bodily remains
outside the country. Over the 35 years that Massasanya has been in the repatriation
business, he has also gained familiarity with several burial traditions in the region,
such as the traditional Ndebele practice of ‘talking to the body’ as it is transported
home, by which the body is encouraged to continue on this cross-border journey
and not to remain behind. NK also reflects on the importance of having an under-
standing of the cultural diversity needed to render services to a variety of nation-
alities and cultural traditions:
African culture is very diverse, you find for example the Ethiopians, they have got
their own way of burial, the Ethiopians usually bury in casket, they don’t use
coffins. There are other traditions. We have got the Ndebeles, they have to talk to
the spirits of the deceased, informing them that they are taking them back home . . .
they believe it has to be done by prayer, so you have to give that room so they can
feel very much comfortable and part of the whole process . . . there are also Shonas,
it is more or less the same, though what differs is the way they bury. Like for
Ndebele, they would slaughter a cow, so inside the grave they put the hide of the
cow . . . the Shonas, they usually use blankets. They buy a new blanket and one is
laid down in the grave and the other one is on the top of the coffin.
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 223

NK engages with migrant communities that hold diverse cultural beliefs

concerning the deceased. He also assists in bridging the gap between young
migrants who are in South Africa and elders back home. As he expresses it,
dealing with a death and the deceased body even before the funeral and burial
involves the observation of cultural norms often known only by the elders of
the families. This is knowledge the younger population – most of the migrants
– do not have. NK provides support for the cultural rituals that need to be
performed in accordance with existent cultural prescriptions. He describes this
aspect of his role as funeral director as follows:
. . . there are certain activities that are performed in the cemetery that are not supposed
to be executed by young people. Like, you know, when you bury you put stones on top
of the grave so those stones are being placed there by the elders; somebody who is a
senior, who is not even expected to bear children. But of course we have got situations
where everybody is of the same age group, especially in South Africa. You find that
you stay with your younger brother who is maybe 5 or 10 years younger than me.
I fall sick, I die and he has to bear full responsibility for the funeral. You find that
most of these people . . . will be clueless because he does not know where to go, he
does not know what to do. Because first and foremost we have to define the family
values: are they Christians? Or are they traditionalist? Or how they want to do it
because we don’t impose on them, but try to understand and do things according to
their expectations.

NK’s role as cultural mediator, bridging the gap between generations, is combined
with facilitating the organisation of various bureaucratic aspects including the
papers and procedures for the body to be repatriated:
. . . we always get situations whereby we are phoned from home, ‘look for so and so,
his brother so and so passed away’, and then they would be shocked to find that the
brother passed maybe three or four months back, and is still in the government mor-
tuary. The younger brother is confused, so that is when we came in. We take the boy,
we ask the family how they want it to be done, and then we organise everything . . .
taking the body from the government mortuary to our parlour. We prepare the body
then we take the youngster home and then we arrange for burial back home.

NK also acts as mediator in family conflicts, as disagreement can also emerge

within the family over whether the body should stay or go. This may be the
case for instance if a spouse in South Africa has different wishes than the
family in the home country. In these cases family disputes around the location
of the grave make visible issues of belonging (Reynolds Whyte 2005). Sometimes
NK also assists by providing families with culturally sensitive alternatives when
the body cannot be repatriated:
. . . you find that at times it becomes very impossible and even more costly to try
repatriate the body. We always make recommendations: ‘Ok if you can’t take the
body home you are going to bury local’. And if they want to come – the elders –
and they don’t have travel documents, [we try] to facilitate those documents [so
that] they come through this side. We book the grave, we get the resources to
conduct a funeral here. So it is painful but there is a ritual that you can perform to
224 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

make it to try to appease the ancestors, the spirits of the deceased, informing them of
the difficulties of taking the body back home.
L. They do it there?
NK. They do it here and they do it back home. It is a conversational aspect of things
because they just kneel down there and they call the spirits of the line of the deceased
according to the name. And they speak to them in the community that will help them
operate from and then they explain the situation and proceed with the funeral.

Funeral parlours are key agents in the process of repatriation as they facilitate
organisation at a community level and assist families with the fulfilment of
certain governmental, bureaucratic necessities for burial in or repatriation from
the country through the processing of a myriad of documents.13 In their capacity
to obtain this documentation funeral parlours act as mediators between the foreign
migrant and the state. Their role is particularly relevant in the case of undocumen-
ted migrants who in life would have most likely tried to avoid the gaze of the
South African state. Indeed, through the documentation process, funeral directors
‘make visible’ the migrant vis-à-vis the state. It can be said therefore that while
death provides undocumented migrants with a legal status, in death they
become a subject of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state.14
Importantly, through their embalming techniques and mortuary credit facili-
ties repatriating parlours are able to provide an undefined extended period
of time to the migrant body. This time allows for an agreement to be
reached between the various role players. Some of these parlours act as cul-
tural mediators for migrant families, bridging generations across borders;
besides they offer culturally sensitive alternatives when the body cannot be
repatriated. As seen, the relationships between funeral parlours and migrants,
national associations, churches, hospices, burial societies are often established
long before death. Among these various organisations, funeral parlours often
maintain a permanent relationship with burial societies providing insurances
to their members and serving them in the event of a death. The next section
looks at the role of burial societies and national organisations in a migrant’s
death.

Burial Societies and National Organisations

The origin of burial societies in South Africa can be traced to the 19th century and
the early days of labour migration (Lee 2009). Burial societies in Africa have been
linked to the English influence on the continent hence it is not surprising that many
migrants, especially those coming from former English colonies form their own
societies once they settle abroad. A case in point is that of Zimbabweans in the
Diaspora, who join burial societies in anticipation of their own death away from
home both in South Africa and in the United Kingdom (UK), as described by
Mbiba: ‘Zimbabweans outside their country save up to ensure they will not rest
for ever in a foreign soil, invest in insurance schemes and to that end partake in
burial association that require weekly or monthly donations . . .’ (2010:145).
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 225

Yet, burial societies are not common among the French-speaking migrant commu-
nities in Johannesburg such as the Ivoirians, Cameroonians and Congolese.
A new trend in patterns of membership has been observed among migrants in
South Africa, also noticed by Mbida (2010) among Zimbabwean migrants both
in South Africa and the UK. That is, migrants are joining burial societies at a
young age; this is similar to what happens among the local population in South
Africa and is a reflection of an increased concern with death among youngsters
(Lee 2009:191). The significant decrease in life expectancy observed in the
region over the last 20 years, largely related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic,15 has
been cited as a contributing factor for this concern. Out of the region, the high
HIV/AIDS prevalence rate among Zimbabweans in the UK underlies these
migrants’ concern (Mbida 2010). In contexts of increased vulnerability, being
part of a burial society constitutes an essential form of assurance, at least for
some portions of the foreign migrant community in South Africa. Yet contextual
conditions play a role in the formation of such societies. While burial societies
thrive in South Africa, in the UK various factors interfere in the associability of
migrants. In that country, Zimbabweans find it difficult to organise themselves
due to the asylum system as well as ‘movement in search of work or study, and
constraints in socialising for those without papers’ (Mbida 210:167).
The assistance of a burial society or burial scheme is generally possible when a
person pays a monthly fee as a living member for a set return to be used
towards a burial and/or a repatriation upon their or a member of their family’s
death. As the amount that each member contributes may not be sufficient to pay
for a funeral,16 burial societies will seek to associate among themselves with
the purpose of increasing their availability of funds at any given time. The director
of an association of burial societies in Johannesburg, which is a pioneer in bring-
ing together a number of burial societies from various nationalities including
South Africans, explains that membership in burial societies is commonly based
on nationality, locality, kinship or tribal or ethnic relations:
. . . now we have different kinds of burial societies even according to family ties and
tribe and even locality burial societies. We have village burial societies and family
societies, for example, Hillbrow burial societies and some people belong to the two
groups. We have different villages and tribes represented. Right now, we have
more than 30 burial societies. They formed their own societies and are affiliated to
us [the association of burial societies]. They contact us each time they need money
in a death case and even when they don’t have money. We deal with foreigners
mostly like Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and so on.

At the origin of these organisations lays the motivation to assure their members
receive a dignified funeral, which is not different from the motivations
members of local burial societies have. However, whilst in a local burial
society its members would be central in the preparations of the funeral itself
(Lee 2009), the main function of cross-border burial societies is to accompany
the corpse for the burial back home. In Rapson’s view ‘burial societies always
226 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

like to give their colleagues a befitting burial just like the army . . .’ The leader of
the association of burial societies describes a religious motivation as an important
element in the willingness to respond to the needs even of those who are not
formal members. In her study on African Independent Churches, Bompani
(2011) identifies a range of economic activities sponsored by the church such as
‘voluntary mutual benefit societies, savings clubs, lending societies, stokvels
(informal savings funds), and burial societies . . .’ support that is economically sig-
nificant, as the author states, the church ‘controls millions of South African rand’
(Bompani 2011:307). Yet the leader of the association of burial societies inter-
viewed, a protestant pastor, describes his spiritual commitment while resigning
to the profits side of this involvement:
Due to our spiritual way of life and Christianity, we do not want to base our services
on money alone that is why we try to help people that do not have as well to bury their
loved ones. We encouraged them to bring people to us whether they have money or
not because we see it’s improper to make profit only out of the societies and that’s
why we help people for better funeral.

He explains how eventual profits generated by the contribution of several individ-

ual societies are used to assist the unemployed:
If someone passes away and is not a member of a burial society, what we do is that, we
get the body and help the burial society and the family. We need to know what they
have and what they don’t have and in my capacity as the leader of the societies, I try to
raise some money from the societies to help them on what they can’t afford to pay for
so that the body can be taken from wherever it is. And if at all they don’t have money,
we tend to help in whatever it will cost to repatriate the corpse to their home country.

In the case presented the links between burial societies and migrants’ communities
become apparent in two senses; in terms of a cultural affiliation that circumscribes
the burial involvements to a specific group of migrants and in terms of religious
responsibility extended to a broader community of migrants. In the first sense,
the logic of association of burial societies responds to the principle of shared
nationality, yet a closer look highlights affinities of family, locality, and ethnicity
between members which facilitate the organisation that follows a migrants’ death
both in Johannesburg and back home. This particular association also assumes the
responsibility towards those non-contributors (the unemployed members of the
migrant community) and this function is motivated by the religious orientation
of its leader.
As said, burial societies are not common among the French-speaking commu-
nities. In the absence of these structures, community leaders and their organis-
ations are central. Among the Ivorian community, for example, responses to
death in the form of repatriation most likely come from their national organisation
and the chairperson of the organisation is a key actor taking the lead in fundrais-
ing. Gbaffou, chairperson of the Ivorian Community in South Africa as well as of
the African Diaspora Forum asserts that the sole fact that someone holds an
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 227

Ivorian passport mobilises the organisation to take responsibility over the

deceased body, he describes this:
. . . Some [Ivorians], when they come [to South Africa], they isolate themselves. They
are not communicating with the community. We don’t know them and it has happened
many times – maybe more than five bodies that we (have) repatriate(d) to Ivory Coast,
where the person passed away and you come across to know that he’s an Ivorian, after
he passed away . . . Maybe through his passport and [we receive a call from a hospital];
‘Oh, we have a body in this particular hospital; he’s an Ivorian because he has an
Ivorian passport. Can you come and identify him?’ So we’ll now have to communicate
with the [family of] this person, and: This name? Where does he come from? Who is
he? Do we have family members around? And so on and we do all this research
through the embassy and it takes time.

Unlike the planned intervention of burial societies, for which members contribute
with monthly payments prior to a death, Ivorians provide assistance to their com-
munity on an ad hoc basis, after death has occurred. The Ivorian organisation
assists those well off and those who do not have money. For the gathering of
resources the organisation appeals to the whole Ivorian community. When some-
body in the community dies, a text message is sent to all Ivorians calling them to
gather to mourn a deceased co-national in night vigils where money is raised if
required. It may be that the body is kept in a mortuary – arranged by a particular
funeral parlour – for an extended period until enough resources are put together.
Gbaffou, describes this:
. . . Some people are doing very well when [they] passed away, using their own fund[s]
to repatriate their bodies, so it’s easy. The person can pass away here, today say,
[and we gather] at [the] Ivorian house, this Saturday at . . . let us gather here for 2
or 3 hours, we’re just mourning. [We] gather some resources, tomorrow we repatriate
the body. But there are some bodies which can lie in mortuaries for at least three
months because we are gonna [need to] multiply the number of [people] giving
[donations] [through a] night vigil. We organise at least 3 [night vigils] in order to
gather the resources need to repatriate the body.

In explaining why the community feels compelled to act, Marc Gbaffou stresses the
importance of culturally shared notions about the dead. Those who have lost family
members or friends through difficult deaths are particularly compelled to act:
it can happen that the person who has died can come and visit a certain member of the
family to let him know where it is that they are buried so that they can come and claim
the body and return it to their homeland.

Nationality, however, does not always brings the organisation together. Ingila, from
a Congolese organisation, calls it ‘almost a morality’ to return deceased Congolese
home for burial, yet responsibility based on shared nationality does not trigger
concerted actions around death among the Congolese community. Political, ethnic,
linguistic differences, even disparities in infrastructure between the east and west of
Congo prevail when responding to death, making repatriation often very difficult.
In fact whether the deceased migrant is from the west or the east will determine the
228 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

feasibility of returning the body back home. Less likely to return is a migrant coming
from the East where transport is difficult and no direct flights are available. Those
Congolese from the East of the country are therefore often buried locally.
Certain things are implied by being a member of the group; your identity comes
with rights or a denial of rights that is also affected by the association to
another sovereign nation and territory of land. Along with this comes the impera-
tive of taking care of the living and deceased of the group, yet the collaborative
spirit of the communities may be fractured in their desire to help each other due
to the nature of their sheer community size or due to transplanted political,
ethnic and linguistic divisions at home as evident in the Congolese community.

To Conclude
Through this posthumous journey, this article has presented the various actors
with major roles in the management of a migrant’s death in Johannesburg.
Their roles and motivation to become involved have revealed an interesting
mixture of shared degrees of responsibility. The beginning of this journey
showed that the caring for death begins in life. Social workers and health carers
at a hospice in Yeoville looking after the terminally ill migrant; the staff at Min-
istry to Zimbabwean Immigrants who counsel and arrange for the ill migrant to
return home to die; bus drivers who transport the terminally ill migrant through
the border back home; all get involved motivated by a shared concern about a
death away from home. They take part in a concerted effort to anticipate and cir-
cumvent the potential complications surrounding the death of a destitute migrant.
As we have seen, whilst returning a body home is a shared aspiration among
migrants, several conditions need to be met to make it possible. Repatriation may
be unrealised if the deceased migrant lacks strong connections, and the body is
not claimed from a state government morgue, or the family of the deceased does
not take responsibility leaving the body subject to a local pauper burial. Repatriation
requires also a concerted decision about where to bury the body. The actors
concerned with the management of a migrants’ death play a role addressing these
and other factors that may complicate the return of the body home.
We have paid special attention to repatriating funeral parlours due to their mul-
tiple-level involvement in the management of a migrant’s death. Firstly, in the
lengthening of time between death and burial that embalming of the body and
the mortuary storage allows. This time is crucial in preserving the body from its
decay and for migrant families and communities to gather resources and to take
decisions around the organisation of the funeral and burial. Yet, along with
this opportunity there are risks associated which these directors assume (for
example, the body and related costs are left in the hands of the funeral parlours).
Secondly, as we have suggested, through their specific role in obtaining the
necessary documentation to process a death, and specifically that of an undocu-
mented migrant, these funeral parlours become mediators in the relationship
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 229

with the state. By assisting in acquiring legal status, repatriating parlours are
instrumental in obtaining the right to ‘reside’ for the deceased migrant – or the
right eventually to be buried in South Africa. Paradoxically, it is with death and
at the point of repatriation that the undocumented foreign migrant finally
‘belongs’ to the South African state. Thirdly, we have highlighted the central
role of the funeral parlours as cultural mediators and cultural ‘experts’. On
occasions parlours may intervene as mediators in family disputes. Overall,
while we find various degrees of participation, repatriating parlours are instrumen-
tal in bridging the gap between generations and localities, transferring relevant
death-related knowledge to the younger generations of migrants living in Johan-
nesburg. These funeral parlours assist with the rituals needed to be performed
to the body in preparation for its posthumous journey, even in situations when
they do not belong to the culture of the deceased. As cultural mediators, repatriat-
ing funeral parlours assist families in maintaining their traditions in times of death.
We examined the role of the burial societies and of national associations who raise
funds to repatriate the deceased migrants. Although these are organisations with
differentiated functions we bring them together in their role of financing the
cost of a migrant’s death. In examining the responses of the various communities
of migrants, differences emerged between the Anglophone and Francophone com-
munities. Whilst among the former, the tradition of burial societies is a well-
established one, and migrants find it natural to continue to belong to these
groups while living abroad, Francophone communities do not make planned pro-
visions to respond to a death away from home. Their responses are post death, ad
hoc and come from national associations and, importantly, from the leaders of
these organisations who are willing and able to mobilise resources among its
members. Among the burial societies we identified an emergent form of organis-
ation, a multi-national ‘association’ of burial societies that seems to be unique to
Johannesburg that brings together both internal and cross-border migrants. This
association of burial societies found an efficient formula to minimise the risks
and maximising the available resources at any given time, to pay for the return
home of both foreigners and internal migrants. This particular association illus-
trates how Johannesburg is creating new forms of organisation and new types
of social actors who can meet the needs of this mobile population.
This work has portrayed a glimpse of the everyday life of migrants in the face of
death, it has examined through the lens of death the life and concerns of a highly
diverse community of migrants in Johannesburg. The city is the chosen scenario
that offers us a vantage point to understand how Africans deal with death outside
their home countries, an issue that this work, at least partially, has intended to
illustrate (we have not addressed here the particular ways in which African
Muslims respond to death). Within this diversity, the motivations of the living
to take part in the organisation of a migrants’ death speak to their association
with the deceased and respond to a shared need to restore order to a death out
of place.
230 African Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2, August 2012

The management of this posthumous journey, we have learned, takes into account
all that is unique about a foreign migrant death, whether those factors are
additional paperwork, familial conflict over an international burial location, finan-
cial or social status that is affected by particular vulnerabilities associated with
migration, or legal status itself. It is paramount to realise the degree to which
all of the agents identified in this management are interconnected, even as particu-
lar steps and particular agencies are perhaps more essential than others. These
interwoven agents, migrants and non-migrants alike, represent not only a practical
field of activity, but also a world of connections that function both in the sphere or
the living and in the period of time between a death and final interment. In iden-
tifying and investigating both the systematic procedures and experiences that fuel
the management of migrant death in Johannesburg, we find a system that is at once
variegated and defined. In the absence of the procedures that would have managed
death at home, the agents of death management in Johannesburg offer a chance to
navigate the complicated financial, social, governmental and spiritual channels
that coalesce in the effort to bring home a body out of place.

Note on Contributors
Lorena Nunez (PhD) is a senior researcher at the African Centre for Migration
and Society (ACMS) University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Brittany Wheeler received her MA in Forced Migration Studies from the African
Centre for Migration and Society, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
in 2011.

Notes
1. Marc Gbaffou, chairperson, African Diaspora Forum and chairperson, Ivorian community in
South Africa.
2. These civil society members include a forensic scientist, a doctor, a priest, a social worker, directors
and employees of funeral parlours, representatives of burial societies and migrants largely.
3. Brittany Wheeler’s ‘(Un)Rest in Peace: The Agents of Human Remains Repatriation and the
Lives of Living Migrants: A Study of Agency, Process and Effect in Repatriating Bodies
from South Africa and the USA’, Masters in Forced Migration Studies, 2011, African Centre
for Migration and Society, University of the Witwatersrand.
4. In May 2008 a peak in violence arose and more than 60 foreign nationals were reported dead.
Attacks against foreigners are recurrent events today and spread throughout the main cities of
the country, particularly in the townships (Misago, Monson et al. 2010).
5. A ‘proper’ funeral refers to the multilevel response to death, an event that requires interventions
at the material, the social, cultural and spiritual levels. Ideally, a proper funeral and burial would
take place at home. The opposite extreme would be a pauper burial in an unnamed grave in a
foreign land in absence of family members and the migrant community that would mourn and
bury the deceased migrant.
6. Nazareth House is located in the suburb of Yeoville, and was first erected by Catholic nuns to care
for orphans of the 19th century gold rush. Over time, the clinic has served as a place of access
for antiretrovirals (ARVs), and it now, as pointed out by our interviewee, serves as a hospice
primarily to Zimbabweans. It is estimated that 80 per cent of its patients are non-South African.
 Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg 231

7. Existing data from our interviews indicates a growth in the number of funeral parlours offering
this service from the early 2000s. The number of parlours was given to us by Mr Massasanya,
the oldest repatriating parlour in Johannesburg.
8. The funeral directors interviewed were all men, as well as those in charge of the mortuaries and
the ones transporting the bodies. Women in this business are mostly working in the administra-
tive section of the business as managers or secretaries.
9. The biggest businesses have a mortuary of their own, they have a chapel to hold religious ser-
vices on their premises; they have in display a large number of coffins; and have their own
vehicles. The smaller businesses rent their vehicles out and often do not have their own mor-
tuary facilities, but use the services of available mortuaries, depending on where the body is
located. Yet each funeral parlour is responsible for the task of embalming their bodies.
10. Today, as the interviewee states, they do not service poor African migrants mainly because their
prices are higher than the small parlours and they do not repatriate by road, they do so only by air.
11. Those who pass away in the Central Methodist Church may find themselves under the initial
care of the George Chiwa, a Zimbabwean caretaker assisting the Medicins Sans Frontieres
health clinic adjacent to the church. He will first arrange for the body to be taken to the
Wings of Deliverance funeral parlour, with whom an arrangement has been drawn up for
migrant bodies through the well-known priest Paul Verryn. After this, he will begin the
search for the next of kin of the migrant, information which in most cases has been recorded
during the initial intake of the person to the church.
12. South Africa’s regulations on the disposal of an unidentified corpse establish the following: ‘A
body that has not been identified must be moved to a freezer within seven days of admission,
and if such body remains unidentified for 30 days, the local municipality under whose jurisdic-
tion the designated facility is, must provide for a pauper burial or cremation of such a body’
(STAATSKOERANT 2007). Regulations Regarding the Rendering of Forensic Pathology
Service: Section ‘removal and transportation of body’, Section ‘identification of the body’
N8 30075 31 N8 R.636 20 J.
13. These documents are 1) Identification of the deceased’ specific citizenship; 2) A relative in
South Africa to confirm the deceased’s identity (if no identity document is available); 3) A
Notice of Death from the Department of Home Affairs; 4) An Unabridged Death Certificate
from the Department of Home Affairs; 5) Letter of non-contagious disease issued by the
Department of Health; 6) Burial Order from the Department of Home Affairs; 7) Letter from
Department of Health and Social Development granting exportation of human remains from
South Africa; 8) Letter of permission to repatriate from home country (from the respective
Embassy); 9) Embalming certificate.
14. This line of interpretation on the roles of repatriating funeral parlours was suggested to us by
Rebekah Lee in e-mail communication on 4 May 2012.
15. Overall, the region has experienced a sharp decrease in life expectancy along with an increase
in HIV/AIDS-related deaths, see http://www.globalhealth.org/hiv_aids/global_view/
16. If members contribute R50 per month and the group is made up of 10 members the amount
collected in a year makes up R6,000.

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