The family was shocked when they received the body of their beloved mother, Rose Maselane (74) on Wednesday afternoon, February 9, at their home. “When the elders opened the coffin to check if indeed it is our beloved parent, they found her leaning to her side.

“They also noticed that her face and her clothing were wet and when they tried to position her correctly, they were immediately hit by an unbearable odour,” explained Virginia Nghondzweni, niece to the deceased. The family decided that they can’t keep the body in the house until the next morning for the funeral service.

They rushed to the graveyard to bury her, but this infuriated the villagers. The family told the Herald that they demand that the funeral service provider (the name is known to the Herald) compensate them for the bad service rendered to them. “My aunt has been a loyal client for all these years, but they didn’t give her the dignified send-off she had hoped for,” Nghondzweni added.

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Last year in Phalaborwa another family also accused the same service provider of leaving their loved one to decompose in the mortuary. Herald tried numerous times to contact the parlour without any success. The Moselane family told Herald that they eventually met with the parlour at Nkowankowa Police Station to try to solve the problem on Saturday, February 12, where the service provider promised to come back to the family by the following Thursday.

However, Nghondzweni told the Herald on Tuesday, February 15, that the service provider denied the allegations by the family and said it could no longer visit the family due to workload and they can only communicate on WhatsApp. The service provider also said they were going to take legal action against the family for the alleged punching of tyres of their hearse at the graveyard. At the time of going to the press, there was no settlement between the two parties.