The outbreak of Covid19, did not only take the lives of those who succumbed to it but also changed the lifestyle of many. The rules and regulations set around the disease have caused disruption both in the economy and social aspects. What was a norm now has become uncanny. As it is reported that one of the things we can do to flatten the curve of Covid19 is to maintain a social distance of 1.5 meter. This alone has made arrangement settings a little bit heavier on those who had ceremonies planned including the unforeseen, death. Mme Mapena, a 64 year old elderly woman and a mother of 4 children, who died in a car accident that involved a public transportation vehicle and a light private motor between Matatiele CBD and Maluti, was laid to rest on youth day. According to mme Mapena’s son, Kwala Mapena, it has been over 15 years since they had a funeral, arranging a funeral under the strict conditions was a challenge for them. “As a family alone, we are more than 50, the challenge we encountered was sitting down thinking of who we can invite to be part of the funeral and who should not come. That alone was draining, considering that we had funeral arrangements ahead of us and at the same time we also needed to grieve for our mother.” While many have reacted positively to the cost cutting the Covid19 burial restrictions come with, for the Mapena family, that was not the issue, but rather the lack of emotional support “ To us, financially we were prepared so the cost cutting did not really matter or did have an impact. But what we felt was just not enough was the emotional support. Because not everyone was present physically, the emotional support is what we were short off from the aunts and other extended family members. It was just not the same.”
One of the restrictions implemented by government to avoid further spread of the virus is that any form of gathering, the number of people should not exceed 50, including funerals. In the Eastern Cape, the first gathering that resulted in the peak of the confirmed cases of Covid19 was at a funeral at Port Saint John’s where 40 people tested positive. Turning back people who had come to show support has become a dread as it is regarded as inhumane especially in the villages. As a result, we have seen a number of events where police invaded funerals where the rule of 50 people had not been adhered to and had people dispersed.
This also happened at Caba Village, Matatiele where police officials stormed in during a burial ceremony of an Ethiopian shop assistant who was set alight and burnt to the ground in his shop by a group of gangsters in the early hours of the Friday last week.
This has also been met with different views by some members of the community. Some believe that the Covid 19 arrangements are not in favour of the affected families, whereas some believe that they should be the new norm of African burials. One of the respected pastors in Matatiele, Pastor Johannes Mzozoyana of the Grace Revival Church in Maluti said the Covid 19 regulations have made funerals of black people look foreign to an extent that it has become difficult to distinguish between a funeral and just a formal meeting. “A funeral that we have become so accustomed to from our upbringing has been turned into an economic subject going as far as labelling the event a fruitless expenditure. Unfortunately black people support each other, if the family is aggrieved the community members become part of that grief and that is why it is so absurd to restrict people to not come and say their last goodbye to the person they knew” concluded Pastor Mzozoyana.
