‘The Devil is burning this room,’ angry graffiti inside the burned structure in the cemetery reads. ‘I love mother,’ says another.
Neatly positioned sandals, a bottle of water, a mop that has seen better days, the ghost of a bed propped against the wall and a crisply folded shirt are the only indications that people are living in the small structure in the middle of the cemetery.
Braamfontein Cemetery is a home for the dead, not the living, but two groups of children have allegedly made these broken, burned rooms their homes.
“They are not here in the day time, they only return at night,” Dr Aleit Pretorius, head of the Centre of Transformation and Development at the Brixton Recreation Centre said on 15 September.
“They break into the cemetery and come and sleep here. They are runaways. It’s not right. Children shouldn’t live next to the dead.”
The children have allegedly been living in the cemetery for months.
Pretorius has been keeping an eye on the children and the graveyard. One of the missions in his life is to keep street children off the street, and to that end he runs a skills-based programme at the Brixton Recreation Centre. The one group of children, he said, are only two boys, possibly brothers; and the other is a larger group. They allegedly live in different structures, both close to the cemetery crematorium.
“Some of these kids come from decent homes,” he said, looking at the graffiti.
“Look, they can spell. Even the swear words they write is spelled right. And they’re tidy, they clean up after themselves, inside at least.”
There is evidence in the ancient graveyard of recent vandalism – there are knocked-over graves and some have been spray-painted. Pretorius thinks that it’s the work of the children. The Jewish section of the Braamfontein cemetery is unvandalised and unlived in – the high-spiked fences surrounding this part of the graveyard suggests coming and going into it isn’t as easy.
Outside of the makeshift window and door (holes in the burned walls) the graves of Braamfontein Cemetery lurk. Rubble, debris and rubbish is piled high, and an orange football amidst the rubble suggests that the children might be playing football.
*A Brixton policeman said that they were aware of the children. He said that relevant authorities and social welfare organisations had to be notified before the police could respond to the situation.
