After miles apart court rules that couple to be reunited in death

Almost a year after she was buried in a municipal cemetery miles from her husband’s grave, the Eastern Cape High Court has authorised the exhumation of a local woman’s body so the couple can be together in death.

After Sylvia Phindezwa Zitshu died last July, her family the Ngikelas and that of her late husband met to make arrangements for her burial. Both families agreed that in accordance with Xhosa custom, Zitshu should be buried at her marital home in the village of Peddie alongside her husband.

But their meeting gave rise to a feud over finances and she ended up being buried with the Ngikelas in Makhanda instead. Desperate that his parents be together in their final resting places, the couple’s adoptive son, Anathi Ntshate, then approached the court.

In delivering her ruling on the case, Judge Nomathamsanqa Beshe on Thursday emphasised that exhuming and reburying someone was “unusual, drastic and traumatic to the loved ones”.

“And as far as I understand, not uncomplicated,” she added.

On the version offered up by Zitshu’s sisters and niece, tensions between the two families boiled over after the Zitshus asked for her bank cards.

“This apparently did not go down well with [her] family, who felt that the Zitshus were only interested in [the] deceased’s money,” Beshe explained.  “That is when things came to a head. According to the [Ngikelas], it is at that stage that the Zitshus suggested they should take ‘the daughter of Ngikela’ and bury her in Makhanda.”

Attempts on the part of the Zitshus to make amends afterwards were unsuccessful and Zitshu’s family went ahead and buried her in Makhanda with their relatives.

“The [Ngikelas] suggest that by then they had made funeral arrangements. These included buying a plot at the graveyard, buying a tombstone, paying an undertaker, hiring chairs, funeral venue, transport etc [and] that “many of these expenses would not have been recoverable were the funeral to be cancelled or moved to Peddie”, Beshe said.

She was sympathetic to the Ngikelas, saying they could not have been expected to “let one of their own, a sister, aunt etc – their flesh and blood – remain in a mortuary indefinitely without a
proper burial”.

But, she said, “Be that as it may, in my view the applicants have made a case for the exhumation of the body of the deceased for purposes of reburial at Peddie.”

The judge, however, stopped short of declaring Ntshate “the only rightful person to bury the deceased” as he had initially asked the court to do. Ntshate argued he had been adopted in terms of customary law, but his mother’s family disputed this.

They claimed to know nothing of an adoption and said Zitshu referred to Ntshate only as the child who lived with her. Beshe agreed with the Ngikelas “that had she and her husband decided on formally adopting [Ntshate] as their son she would at least have made that known to her sisters”.

As a result, the judge also refused to order that the Ngikelas hand over Zitshu’s death certificate to Ntshate.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.