Rejuvenating Joburg’s history in Brixton

On one Sunday morning volunteers, led by Friends of Johannesburg Cemeteries (FOJC), were found cleaning headstones of Brixton Cemetery.

This was in preparation for a tour that the organisation will host in February, which will focus on symbolism on the headstones. “So we wanted to make sure that interesting symbolisms on the headstones can be easily seen, hence why we are cleaning them today,” said FOJC convener, Sarah Welham.

Though they had started their cleaning on specific headstones, once those were done, they moved on to cleaning various other headstones. There was a relatively small group of volunteers on the day, which meant they could not venture on further into the cemetery as it is important to work in large groups.

Even with their limited numbers, these volunteers made sure each headstone they were tasked with cleaning was lovingly rejuvenated as though it were their family who laid buried there for centuries. In some cases it was. After Tamzen Dreyer’s cousin started work on their family tree they found out that her great-great-grandmother was at the cemetery. So now, the quest to find her headstone begins with great anticipation and she cannot wait to find out where she lays.

FOJC has been working on cemeteries in the city since about 2018 and Brixton Cemetery is important to them because they view it as a history book of the city. “You find people buried here who were there from the beginning, who built up Johannesburg. Randlords, miners as well as ordinary businessmen who worked in supermarkets and corner cafés. They are all buried here so this is a huge part of the history,” said Welham.

The organisation has big need for donations as they need to buy equipment for their work in the cemeteries. Along with this, community members are more than welcome to join them on one of the clean-ups.

Though Welham did express that she would love to see Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo attend to such things as overgrown weeds and the likes, she recognised that the upkeep of the headstones was on the families. “The problem is that most of these families have since left Joburg and South Africa so they cannot look after them. So in a way we are standing in for these families and looking after their graves.”

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