Visitors to Grahamstown cemeteries, expecting to find tranquil havens to honour the dead, have left shocked and disappointed, finding instead untended graves overgrown with rank grass.
Visitors to Grahamstown cemeteries, expecting to find tranquil havens to honour the dead, have left shocked and disappointed, finding instead untended graves overgrown with rank grass.
And a municipal official says it will be months before anything gets done to remedy the situation. "Whatever happened to respect for the dead?" asked Grahamstown resident Sherryl Louw, who recently visited New Cemetery, next to the N2, where her parents lie buried.
Louw said she had last seen her father's grave three months ago and it had been in "tip-top" condition. Her aunt, Valerie Wild, who lives in Jeffrey's Bay, and who accompanied Louw on Sunday, was appalled. "The grass is so long that in places it was higher than the headstones," she said.
"My brother was buried there 10 months ago and I could have cried when I saw his grave," she said. "Part of the inscription on the headstone was hidden by the pile of sand on the grave. Surely, after 10 months, this earth could have been flattened and compacted?"
Kevin Bates, of Parks and Recreation Department at Makana Municipality, acknowledged the neglect and said the situation was the same in all the operational cemeteries in Makana – Old Cemetery and Mayfield Cemetery.
Bates said the municipal workers delegated with the task of maintaining the three operational graveyards were overloaded with other work. Bates said the municipality would advertise a once-off tender for a private company to clean up all municipal cemeteries.
He said the problem will be solved in the long term after the next financial year began in June, when, providing this was approved in the new budget, a caretaker would be appointed for the New Cemetery.
The cemetery's last caretaker retired in the early 1990s and the municipality as since allowed two employees to live in the caretaker's residence there. Bates said visitors to local cemeteries would have to wait around two months before they saw the cemeteries restored to a more "respectful" state.
