Shady funeral parlours are allegedly colluding with senior municipal officials and gravediggers in Buffalo City to remove the dead from graves and replace them with others who have recently died — for a healthy fee.
The grave-switch scam is allowing owners of these parlours, which are unregistered, to pocket tens of thousands of rand as they cash in on the lucrative funeral game.
Two senior police officers whom DispatchLIVE spoke to this week lifted the lid on the racket, which is among a number of scams devastating the industry.
Industry authority the Funeral Industry Reformed Association (Fira) says the grave-switch is but one of a raft of money-making hustles that include reselling coffins and illegally exhuming bodies for muti and medical purposes.
Municipalities are responsible for cemeteries. DispatchLIVE sent queries to BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya on Thursday night via e-mail.
A reminder was sent to Ngwenya’s WhatsApp on Friday but he had not responded at the time of writing.
The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to the media nor do they want to blow their cover, also revealed that a single grave can be sold to more than one family.
One of the investigators said: “There’s a lot that is happening in these graves that you don’t know about.”
“The way it works is this. Registered funeral companies buy a grave from the municipality for R10,000 and then offer it to clients, but unscrupulous municipal officials offer the same grave to poor families for R4,000. The first family will come to bury their loved one and then leave after the burial service,” the officer said.
“What happens then is that gravediggers remove the casket from the grave and take it to be buried somewhere else. Unbeknown to the first family, the same grave will then be freshly dressed for a new burial for the person related to the poor family.”
The second officer said it was extremely difficult to police the scam as the people involved did everything possible to ensure they were not caught in the act.
“It is always the case in East London that when you arrive at a graveyard you will see three or four graves wide open with coffins inside (they have not been covered over). The families have long gone home.
“There’s a syndicate involved in this but our hands are tied. We can’t really move because most of the people involved have connections with decision makers. They are working with the big guns to make sure they are not caught.”
Asked what happened to the dead who were removed from their final resting place, the officer said they were reburied in paupers’ graves.
“You can visibly notice that in some cases, the soil used to cover new graves is sourced from another area of the cemetery and that proves that the graves were tampered with. At BCM’s Cambridge cemetery you can see a number of graves with soil sourced from somewhere else,” the officer said.
“If the police were to tell the truth, there is a case where prominent parlours were investigated and irregularities found, but nothing happened. The officers were stopped from doing their work — that was defeating the ends of justice. Even the books of BCM officials will tell you wrong information about where people are buried,” he alleged.
Fira national director Johann Rousseau said unregistered funeral parlours were making hay as the industry was not regulated.
“What is happening in Buffalo City is something that will not stop until this multibillion-rand industry is regulated. Graves are tampered with, coffins are removed, body parts are harvested from the dead, but it’s taboo to talk about this. This is the time for the country to wake up and act,” said Rousseau.
He said funeral industry graveyard workers were colluding with people who were after profits.
“Their job is to open and close graves. They are general workers who are not earning that much. If they are offered money to commit these crimes, they do not think twice. We know of such cases, not only in East London but in other parts of the country.”
Rousseau said there was no proper policing of cemeteries.
He blamed this on poor management at municipalities.
“There is just no management of these graveyards. There’s no security, the gates are left wide open at night and these criminals in cahoots with municipal workers do as they like. This is a lucrative business for them.”
The Makalima family of Mdantsane is still searching for their missing relative, who was buried in May.
Vuyokazi Makalima said the remains of his father, Thembekile, had gone missing a few weeks after they buried him.
“We have reported this to the police and we want the grave to be exhumed so my father can be found. What we are hearing is that graves are tampered with, leaving us very worried,” said Makalima.
Rousseau advised bereaved families to be vigilant at all times.
“Do not lose sight of the grave of your deceased loved one. Constantly check and clean it and report if you suspect tampering. The Makalima family should not be alone in this case. Police should act until that family member is found.”
Provincial police spokesperson brigadier Thembinkosi Kinana said the Makalima family did not go to the police station to open a case.
"If they feel they suspect the grave was tampered with or removed, they are welcome to go to any police station within their jurisdiction to open a case," Kinana said.
He did not respond to any of the DispatchLIVE's queries on the grave-switch scam and general tampering.
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