It was shocking to visit the Munsieville/ Sterkfontein Cemetery recently.
As the cemetery expanded through the years and extended, it’s not easy to drive in and locate the graves of family who have passed on.
We drove around for a while and could not spot the graves of my husband’s parents. We went to the office to find out the location of the grave and we were assisted very friendly by the young woman at the reception.
As to be expected the system was offline. So she had to look up the information. To my astonishment she walked to a cupboard and reached out to a large leather-bound journal from a stack of similar-looking books and started looking up the information.
I was surprised and astonished to see what a gem was handled so carelessly.
I mean, shouldn’t it be locked away in a dust free cupboard? In my opinion it should be kept safely in a museum, let alone the archives. Apart from the fact that the inscriptions are pure art! The books alone are worthwhile preserving. Not to speak about the history of an entire town going back when!
Surely there should be printouts of the names of the buried people for those many days the computer is offline. My father-in-law passed away in 1956! The book my father’s name was recorded in on 25 November 2013 is a dirty tattered thing that might have been a book once.
Provided with our info we started our search anew. Well, what a farce! The blocks are hardly marked and to find a grave you must be able to count very good. Needless to say after driving up and down without avail we left.
I brought the flowers home and made little shrines for the parents, shedding tears of frustration and grief.
What happens to tax money? And nobody gets a grave for free. My parents paid a lot of money to be buried in the so-called garden area.
My sister and I have to pay garden services to keep up our parents’ graves. I can understand that things have changed, but by golly, is it so expensive to take a nice piece of wood, paint a number on it and nail it to the existing post or cut down a tree that ruins a grave? What happened to the bins on each block?
I must add that we didn’t feel threatened or unsafe at all and staff were very friendly and helpful.
Come Krugersdorp, visit your once relatives and get the Council to do the right thing.
