Watch: Family demands an apology after receiving wrong body

A bereaved family of Ramaphosa informal settlement got a shock of their lives when they found a body of a woman inside their family member’s coffin.

The discovery of the wrong body occurred on the day of the funeral, January 20, as the family was viewing the body of their son Sonwabile Masumpa (28).

Claudette Peterson (46), a spokesperson for the family, said she was disappointed with the funeral home, SA Funerals based in Germiston, for the poor service received.

Sonwabile was raised by his aunt following the death of his mother in December 2018.

“The incident degraded us. I have never felt so heartbroken and embarrassed the way I did today (January 20). I do not wish this upon my greatest enemy,” Peterson said.

According to Peterson, they contacted the funeral home on January 13 when Sonwabile died in his sleep around 9pm.

“On January 19 they told us that he had been booked for the service and will be taken to Rondebult. They asked us if we will bath him and we said they can do it because we were still busy with the funeral arrangements. They took his clothes and they wrote his name on the bag,” Peterson said.

“When Masumpa’s younger sister viewed her brother she looked confused. The pastor noticed that something was amiss and he too went to view the body and noticed that it wasn’t Masumpa’s body. It was a woman’s body. The funeral service then turned chaotic as mourners rushed outside screaming in fear, leaving the body inside the yard.”

Peterson said they then rushed to the funeral parlour to demand the body of Masumpa. To their greatest surprise they allegedly found him inside a plastic bag, not bathed and with the same clothes that he was wearing when he passed away.

“We demanded answers, but they started to blame one another and no one took responsibility for what happened. They then asked us to leave and promised to bring the right body within an hour. They indeed arrived with the right body, but it was smelling badly,” she said.

The funeral service proceeded to the grave site where my grandson was buried.

“Sonwabile was buried like an animal with no dignity or respect. Imagine if we didn’t open his coffin we would have buried a wrong person. What is worse, they didn’t even apologise for what happened,” she said.

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A neighbour who witnessed everything, Ntombikayise Mkhize, said when the unfortunate events unfolded it was like she was watching a horror movie.

“I am still traumatised. It was unfair for the grieving family to go through such thing,” Mkhize said.

SA Funerals responds

Clive Naidoo of SA Funerals admits that the bereaved family were given the wrong body.

“We would like to apologise to the family and the entire South Africa. We acknowledge our mistake and we are deeply sorry for the inconvenience. We as the funeral parlour rectified the mistake as soon as we were made aware,” he said.

Naidoo said on January 20, the funeral parlour had four bodies to burry and the bodies were thoroughly washed, dressed and coffined for delivery.

He said on January 19, the Masumpa family were reminded to come for the preparation of the deceased and the family told them that they had already brought the deceased clothes on January 18 and asked them as the funeral parlour to prepare the body.

“We also asked them if any member from the family was going to come and accompany the body from the mortuary to the house and they said no. They gave us directions to where we were going to meet one of the family members to accompany the driver to the house. As a funeral parlour we always advise our clients to come for the preparation of their loved ones before any delivery. We experienced a human error whereby our newly employed driver mistakenly took the wrong body to the family,” Naidoo said.

“The driver didn’t wear PPE since the deceased was not Covid-19 related. We as a funeral parlour would like to state that it takes time for the preparation of the deceased. We had to prepare the late Sonwabile Masumpa within 20 minutes for the family to continue with the service at home,” Naidoo said.

The funeral home said they have arranged a meeting with the family to apologise for the inconvenience.

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