Denial of a final resting place to the deceased goes against ubuntu

As much as their name is all that people truly own in life, the final dignity offered to a deceased person is a burial.

Even when nobody knows their name.

Last week, “infuriated” residents of Lehurutshe, outside Zeerust in the North West, stopped the Department of Health from burying 14 unknown and untraceable people in “their” cemetery.

Pauper burials are common worldwide and South Africa is no exception.

Porous borders make for easy entry and, despite the allure of a possibly better life, life is hard here.

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“We are very happy for those who went to stop this madness, we cannot have foreigners buried in our cemetery. Government must send them back home,” a woman, who did not want to be named, said.

The denial of a final resting place to someone who has died, foreigner or not, goes against the very ideals of ubuntu.

William E Gladstone, prime minister of England from 1892 to 1894 said: “Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure, with mathematical exactness, the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the law of the land and their loyalties to high ideals.”

We rightly blame government for all its failings, but we can’t blame it for being inhuman.