Community members clean Vuka Cemetery and warn of “serious consequences”
“We would like to warn those that continue to throw their garbage here that this is the last time that we are talking to them."
SHARPEVILLE.– It seems as though it will be a yearly thing that the Vuka Cemetery will have to be cleaned.
The community of Sharpeville, Ward 14 residents in particular, under the direction of the Boitshepiville Commanders Task Team (a civil and non-profit organization), the African National Congress (ANC) in Ward 14, through the Futheli Ledula Branch, joined hands to fight against illegal dumping at the Vuka Cemetery recently.
The cemetery is along the way to Vanderbijlpark and Tshepiso and Vuka (Sharpeville).
It is also opposite the Vanderbijlpark Cemetery, which makes the community angry because, they say, the Vanderbijlpark Cemetery is not used as a dumping site. Last year, the group carried out the same task, but it was not long before illegal dumpers began throwing their rubbish inside the cemetery again with claims that it is not being collected by the municipality.
Illegal dumping on top of graves and across the cemetery has become a cause for concern for the community, which pleads with those that throw their rubbish at the graveyard to respect the dead. The community members took it upon themselves last year to begin a cleanup campaign to regain and maintain the cemetery as a place of remembrance, reflection, and dignity.
“We would like to warn those that continue to throw their garbage here that this is the last time that we are talking to them. Should it happen that we catch you throwing garbage here there will be serious consequences. Enough is enough!”, said community leader, Biblos Lebona.
Last year, community members also removed vagrants from outside the cemetery where they were apparently ‘encouraging’ drivers of bakkies full of rubbish to come and dump so that they could collect materials to recycle.
“There will be serious consequences,” warned Lebona who added that the only thig that should worry them now is the tall natural grass that will need to be maintained and, “papers that would have come with the air into the cemetery, and, nothing else”.
*After it reached its allowed burial capacity, the Vuka Cemetery was closed in the late eighties/early nineties.
