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Large areas of land in Harare
are now being devoted to cemeteries containing permanent graves, and it is
obvious that at some stage the process of every dead person having a freehold
cemetery plot in perpetuity has to end.
At some stage significant percentages of Zimbabwe�s land surface will have to be devoted to such cemeteries and in theory there could come a time when the entire surface area of the country is needed. Obviously something will happen long before these stages are reached. But there needs to be careful debate and careful thought over the options now. The permanent grave plot is relatively new in Zimbabwe. While burial was universal among Zimbabwean cultures, and graves were marked when dug, nature was allowed to take its course and over the decades graves were abandoned and forgotten. The dead returned to the earth and even if the site was dug over a few decades later, no identifiable remains could be found. With a handful of exceptions, no one in Zimbabwe knows the location of the grave of an ancestor who died a hundred years ago. Great Zimbabwe is in a remarkable state of preservation but there is no identifiable cemetery or grave site in or around the complex, not even those of the rulers. So one option for Zimbabwe�s cemeteries might be recycling. Many crowded countries have taken this route and allowed a body to lie in a grave for a century, before any surviving remains were reverently gathered and the land reused. Cremation has developed as an option in other lands. While some religions, such as Hinduism and the pre-Christian pagan religions of Europe, encouraged or demanded cremation, most monotheistic religions were opposed to the idea, some very strongly. Cremation only started becoming a serious option in Europe in the 20th century, as cemeteries filled and funeral costs rocketed, and the Catholic Church, the largest single group of religious believers in the world, only allowed cremation in the 1960s following a serious theological investigation of just what was involved in cremation. By the time the change was made many Catholic countries were facing serious problems in finding grave sites and ingenious solutions were in use, including huge walls of graves with the coffins stacked in many stories. Cremation has the advantage that the remains are rotted very quickly in a fire, instead of slowly underground, and the dust that remains is compacted into a modest urn that can be buried. A grave for cremated remains can be very small, as any visitor to the Anglican Cathedral in Harare will see in the cloisters where such remains have been buried. It is highly unlikely that any Zimba-bwean society will accept scattering of ashes. But we think that more families should give serious consideration to cremation followed by a burial of the ashes and dust in individual marked graves. This grave, small as it would be, could be marked with a stone and because so little land would be taken, would have a considerably better chance of being left alone forever. No one likes change in something so personal as a funeral. But all societies change and Zimbabwean societies have seen many changes in traditional practice in recent decades. When it comes to laying the dead to rest, change must come to Zimbabwe. All that can be done is for families to be given options for the changes, given full information of what is actually involved, and be given sympathetic advice in making their decisions. The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
