At the 56th session of the Human Rights Council Tidball-Binz UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions presented a report on the protection of the dead from a human-rights perspective and noted the following: “The protection of and respect for the dead is something that makes us human.
“It has been prevalent, since the beginning of humanity, in all cultures and religions and is regulated in religious, cultural and social practices around the world, in national laws and also in international humanitarian law that applies in times of war.” (https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2024/07/protecting-and-respecting-dead-makes-us-human)
In the article Mense, honde ‘saam veras’ Jana Scheepers (17 October 2024) describes the gruesome conditions at the Drakenstein crematorium. This is the stuff of nightmares. What is really terrifying though is that the responsible authority, Cape Wineland’s District Municipality (CWDM) has been aware of the situation since 2021 and has yet to resolve it. The constitutional right to human dignity even in death should surely transcend any regulatory obstacles to the immediate intervention, requested by the Funeral Industry Reformed Association (Fira). It is right that Fira enacts their intention to report the matter to the Human Rights Commission.
Municipalities are failing us in the less tangible but most important aspects of human existence. The situation at the crematorium cannot be divorced from concerns increasingly aired in Paarl Post regarding unbridled high-end developments at the expense of cultural heritage and social cohesion in the Western Cape. Development facilitates clean fiscal audits, but municipalities need also to be scrutinised for their performance in respecting the civil and human rights of all their residents. In the absence of such scrutiny gleaming columns of affluence will continue to rise as the pillars of humanity crumble.
I salute Jana Scheepers for her well-researched article. The photographs of scenes at the crematorium reflect the deeply disturbing reality, of gross indifference to human life and suffering. This, hopefully, is not also a metaphor for a dark future in the Cape Winelands.
