BUSHBUCKRIDGE – Given Mametje, who was murdered and burned by criminals in 2020, was buried over the weekend.

According to the mother of the deceased, Rose Mametja, her son’s remains have been in the morgue while they waited for DNA results, and every time she enquired about them, she was told to wait.

“More than three DNA samples were taken from me, but that did not help, because I had to wait for this long, since they kept on getting lost, until I approached the leader of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, Chief Mathupa Mokoena, and the Human Rights Commission, who ordered the police to release the body,” said Mametje.

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She said she has now found closure and that she would like to thank all the stakeholders for assisting her family to force the police to release the body of her child.

“Now I am praying that other families who are also in a similar situation get this assistance, because some rituals need to be performed when one of our family members passes on, but I had to wait for two years. Our police are failing us,” said Mametje.

Meanwhile, the family of Kenneth Shabangu of Masoyi near White River await the body of his niece, Felicia Mabuza (21), who was murdered and buried in a shallow grave with four young women three years ago.

“After we had prepared for the funeral, we were told that the body would be released within a few weeks. The fact that Felicia’s body had been kept in the mortuary for a very long time caused her granny some complications, which led to her death. As a family, we are worried about this situation, because we no longer believe that her remains will be released. We tried and failed to convince the police to speed up the process and nobody communicated with us,” said Shabangu.

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After some months, Felicia’s grandmother, who raised her, passed away, and the cow that was meant for Felicia’s funeral was used to serve the people who attended her grandmother’s, instead. A provincial police spokesperson, Brig Selvy Mohlala, said DNA tests are done by the national laboratory, therefore, once they are sent there, there is nothing the police can do until they are sent back to them.

The police minister, Gen Bheki Cele, revealed that the delays can be attributed to many things, including “budgetary allocations, contracts management and the shortage of DNA consumables, which are very critical for having DNA sampling in our forensic laboratories.” At the time, Cele stated that the national backlog at the country’s Forensic Science Laboratories stood at 208 291 cases.