Uproar over ground work at cemetery
Earth works being carried out at the Pretoria East cemetery came under fire from some residents on Wednesday, but Tshwane metro said it was merely preparation for the installation of irrigation and the planting of lawns among the tombstones.
Scenes that resembled devastation met visitors to one section of the Pretoria East cemetery on Thursday when workers were busy cleaning the graveyard using heavy earth moving equipment.
Lawn, grass, shrubs and even small trees were removed while the driver of a front-end-loader moved between the rows of graves, demolishing everything but the headstones.
The work being done at the cemetery was in preparation of installing irrigation and planting lawn as required by the Tshwane metro by-laws.
Rekord could not find damage to any tombstone caused by the cleaning operation embarked on by the Tshwane metro on Wednesday.
Visitors to the graveyard said that the rows of soil between the headstones surprised them but that at the time their family members and friends had been buried at the cemetery, they had been informed by officials that only the erection of headstones would be allowed.
“The municipality’s intention had always been to have only lawn between headstones with no markers or construction of any sort in the area where the coffin laid,” Malekgotla Ntoele, widow of PAC and Robben Island veteran Benjamin Ntatenoholo said.
She said when her husband was laid to rest in the cemetery in 2012 there had been no doubt that they would only be allowed to erect a headstone.
“Therefore I am not upset about them cleaning between the headstones. It would just have been nice if they had warned us before they started the work to have given us the chance to remove some of the valuables and such placed in front of the headstone,” she said.
She had been informed by the metro that once the cemetery had been cleared, landscape artists would move in to design and replant the areas between the graves.
Workers on Thursday were removing obstacles manually before the front-end-loader cleaned the areas between the headstones.
Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor for the area, Lex Middelberg, said what the metro workers were doing to the cemetery amounted to ‘violation of a tomb’.
In recent times the metro had come under fire for not maintaining cemeteries in the city.
Tshwane metro spokesman Lindela Mashigo on Thursday stressed that claims about graves been desecrated were devoid of any truth.
“What is happening is the ground preparation for installation of irrigation and lawn planting, after the City had received numerous complaints for not planting lawn in a new block as per cemetery specification,” Mashigo said.
He added that Pretoria East cemetery was a berm category cemetery with only headstones and lawn as per cemetery specification.
He explained that a berm category meant a cemetery with only headstones and lawn between the grave plots, that had a good infrastructure and a high level of maintenance such as tarred roads/paving, office blocks, irrigation system, landscaped gardens and lawn.
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