The Eastern Cape’s government morgues have 346 unidentified and unclaimed bodies, some of which are believed to have been homeless people who died on the streets.
The provincial department of health confirmed to DispatchLIVE the number of the unclaimed bodies but it was non-committal about their social standing.
However, the causes of the deaths suggest many may have been homeless or living on the streets.
They include stabbings and hypothermia.
In some cases, the department confirmed, only skeletal remains were brought in.
Civil society has raised concerns about the number of unclaimed bodies, saying some could go uncollected for close on two years.
The highest number of unidentified bodies is in the OR Tambo region with 149, followed by Nelson Mandela Bay with 73.
In Buffalo City, there are 40 unclaimed bodies.
The department said 120 of the bodies had already been approved for a pauper’s burial.
On Monday, DispatchLIVE published, as part of an investigation into the living conditions of homeless people, an article about the difficulties faced by undocumented homeless people.
Eastern Cape home affairs provincial manager Gcinile Mabulu told of the difficulties in identifying the homeless, even in death.
“You cannot do anything. You cannot transact anything without an identity document and it’s even worse when a person dies with no-one around.
“Having an identity document on one’s person at the time makes it easier to trace that person.”
He confirmed that if people had had IDs but then lost them, it was almost impossible to trace them using their fingerprints because these were mostly damaged; their quality deteriorated after death.
“What happens is that some of them do not bathe for a long time.
“They warm their hands over open fires, they also smoke [certain substances] which burn their hands and you find that the quality of their fingerprints is compromised because of this damage.”
Health spokesperson Yonela Dekeda referred DispatchLIVE to the police when asked to confirm if all the unclaimed bodies were in fact those of homeless people.
“It is not easy to detect that these bodies are homeless, as everyone has relatives.
“We cannot therefore just presume that there are no relatives who can come forth to identify and claim these bodies, after police investigations and processes have been followed.
“Some of them are found dead, others [were involved] in accidents — different reasons lead to unclaimed bodies.
“But there are only a few cases where people were admitted to hospital and end up unclaimed.”
Dekeda said the department had to wait for the police to complete their investigations, including tracing their families.
This should happen within three months before the department could apply to local municipalities to perform a pauper’s burial but it could take longer if police had not completed their work.
She added the figure given to DispatchLIVEchanged constantly because the forensic pathology services brought in bodies around the clock.
Dekeda could not say if any of the unclaimed bodies were those of foreigners.
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Police spokesperson Brig Tembinkosi Kinana had not replied to a request for comment at the time of going to print.
Lonwabo Yiliwe, the founder of Let’s Find Them, an NGO which seeks missing people, said the problem of unclaimed bodies was serious as they could remain in state mortuaries for up to two years.
“They end up reaching a state where they can never be identified, and that means they may never be released to their families.
“Those are the challenges. Bodies are kept at pathology centres for too long.
“We have started engagements with the department of health to work together because we specialise in finding missing people and naming unidentified bodies.
“But our challenge is that the department of health says it cannot give us the go-ahead; only the SAPS can do that.”
Yiliwe said he had even written to health MEC Nomakhosazana Meth raising concerns about the problem because “bodies are rotting in the morgues”.
A number of relatives, including people from Lesotho, raised concerns that they could not find their loved ones, with some even going as far as doing a traditional ceremony to “release” their loved ones without seeing their bodies.
In some instances, a proper process had not been followed when accepting a body.
“They flout the processes. You occasionally find that a body is stored for two or three months with the fingerprints not being captured.
“Where are you going to get fingerprints from a decomposed body?”
He said they had tried to engage private labs but the labs said they were prevented from getting involved by government red tape.
Last year, DispatchLIVE reported that the state of mortuaries in the province was so bad that some postmortems were performed outdoors.
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