Imagine visiting the final resting place of your loved one a day before burial, only to find out that there is someone else buried there. This is a story of two families struggling for answers at the West Park Cemetery in Melville.
A grieving family was forced to bring up the body of their loved one. It happened just hours after 59-year-old Andries Van Zyl was buried in the wrong plot. His sister in law Daphne Grove says she went to the manager at the cemetery to report that it was the wrong grave.
The grave Van Zyl was buried in was reserved for the burial of 97-year-old Peter Nkotsane.
The family says the grave was bought nine years ago. Their wish was to lay him to rest next to his wife.
“In our culture we believe that since they got married they must get buried in the same place,” says granddaughter Naledi Kgosane.
For the Nkotsane family, it is more than what meets the eye. “We have to use our own spiritual things so that we can take out the spirit or the soul that was buried inside that grave, so we have to put our own soul,” says son Jethro Nkotsane.
At last the casket was pulled out. The undertaker Dwayne De Beer blames City Parks. He says they gave them wrong numbers.
City Parks has declined to comment.
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