MASERU is running out of burial space, forcing the city council to consider imposing a solution that could offend conservative Basotho who are still rooted in traditional beliefs.
The council is planning to usher in cremation and “top-on-top” provisions as graveyards are rapidly running out of space.

This is likely to attract criticism from many Basotho who are highly superstitious.
“Top-on-top” is when a dead person is buried on top of another in the same grave but the MCC demands that the one buried first should have been buried for at least 8 years.
Before the establishment of the council in 1989, graves were allocated to families by village chiefs.

As time went by, graves were located in one garden for an entire village because family burial spaces rapidly filled up as communities expanded, especially due to increased rural to urban migration.

As a result, the family graves system was abandoned for community graveyards but within 20 years from the early 1990s the city found itself back to square one.
The newly available graveyards filled up and could not be expanded because people built around them, forcing the council to designate new ones that would be used by several villages.

The council in the late 1990s designated the Motlakaseng cemetery in Khubetsoana to cater for the villages of Khubetsoana, Sekamaneng, Koalabata, parts of Ha-Mabote and Naleli.
Today the available space at the Motlakaseng cemetery is not enough for more than 100 graves, meaning in the next five years these villages will have nowhere to bury their dead.

Another designated cemetery is Lepereng, which caters for the villages of Ha-Mabote, the whole of Ha-Tšosane, Motimposo, Tšenola, Ha-Tšiu, Upper and Lower Thamae, the whole of Qoaling and its sub-villages, Lithoteng and Lithabaneng.

Today the burial area is rapidly shrinking.
Other areas at the Mamenoaneng, Ha-Abia, Ha-’Nelese, Ha-Thetsane, Tsolo and Linakotseng, including Masowe may also soon have nowhere to bury their dead.

Lineo Molepe, 37, from Ha-Tšiu says she does not have any problem with the top-on-top system because of the shrinking burial space.

“This would ensure that the graves are clean because at the moment they are unclean,” Molepe says.

“Burying our loved ones in private property would also ensure that animals do not enter the cemeteries,” she says.

It is embedded in the Basotho tradition that cemeteries should be continually cleaned because it is the place of the ancestors.

However, shared graveyards sometimes becomes problematic because of differing customs as each family have their own ancestral worship practices.

Puseletso Manare from Ha-Leqele says the Maseru City Council (MCC) should get a huge site for a new cemetery.

She says Lesotho should emulate what South Africa has done in Botshabelo in the Free State.
Manare says she is completely against a person being taken from his village and be buried in another.

“Basotho like to visit their dead in the cemeteries,” she says.
She says it would be burdensome for someone to travel to another village to check on their dead.

She says Maseru is now growing big and the relevant authorities should try to accommodate all people.

Her argument is that some families cannot afford the top-on-top system because it is costly.
A top-on-top burial requires a health official’s presence to ensure that the people would not get in touch with the body of the previously buried person.

It also requires the grave diggers to go 12-feet further down to allow the next one that will be buried in the same grave space for burial.

Maseru, ever since the introduction of textile factories in 1980, started being a city teeming with tens of thousands of residents who at some point in their lives would die and need to be buried.

Now, the 138 square kilometre-city teeming with 400 000** people, is facing an acute shortage of graveyards plots.

Some of the cemeteries have already been closed and are no longer used.
For example, Lifelekoaneng cemetery in Ha-Mabote and many others have been closed.

The issue of dwindling graveyards and scarcity of burial sites is so serious that in November last year there was chaos at the Lifelekoaneng cemetery in Ha-Mabote after the police ganged up with the MCC officials to fight villagers over the burial of a woman.

The villagers had dug a grave to bury one of their own with the chief’s permission but the MCC argued the whole procedure was illegal.

The MCC then brought an excavator and filled the freshly dug grave with soil, torching violent scenes at the grave-site.

The villagers threw stones at the police but lost the battle and the grave was eventually filled with soil.

The MCC spokesperson ’Makatleho Mosala says they encourage people to leave some of their cultural practices so that they could be able to accommodate all the dead wishing to be buried in the city.

She says their graveyards are rapidly filling up.
To address this problem, they have a number of suggestions they make to the people wishing to use their sites.

Mosala says Basotho should change their mind-sets that they should be buried in their respective village of family areas in the city.

“If one stays in Ha-Abia, one should not expect to be buried there,” Mosala says, adding that one would be “buried anywhere within the city’s burial premises”.

While they are thinking of securing more places to bury the dead, Mosala says they have tried to be innovative and introduced the top-on-top system.

For this new system to happen, they arrange with families during a funeral so that the other family member be buried in the same grave.

The grave is dug in such a manner that two people are buried in the same grave but not at the same time.

Mosala says this only happens if there is an agreement and documents that the dead people are relatives.

“This is not a booking but an arrangement,” she says.
She says families should talk with their funeral parlors that six feet should be for the first dead person and on top of it, there should be another six feet for yet another person.

Mosala says the top-on-top system is already being practised in many places within the city.
She says they are also encouraging people to opt for cremation because it would save the space.

“After the deceased are cremated, the ash is given to the family to put in an urn,” she says.
“Some families dispose of it in the seas or rivers.”

For those who wish to bury the ash, it is compressed into a small portion which saves space.
A study conducted in May 2017 showed that the average cost for cremation was around M7 000.

A private cremation could cost about M5 000, while a chapel cremation could cost anything upwards of M9 000.

A private cremation could cost about M5 000, while a chapel cremation could cost anything upwards of M9 000.

This is minus the cost of transporting the body to South Africa for the process.
A normal burial, minus transportation costs, ranges between M15 000 and M30 000.
Both cremation and the burying of a deceased person on top of another clash with Basotho cultural and religious norms.

Advocate Borenahabokhethe Sekonyela, a Customary Law and Environmental Law expert, says cremation is a new phenomenon in Basotho culture.

“It was never there in the culture of Basotho,” Advocate Sekonyela said.
He says Basotho believe that when a person dies, his spirit lives on.

That is why relatives would want their dead to be buried next to other deceased of the same blood.

He says it is for this reason that when a person dies and is buried in a certain area, his or her family members would exhume his body so that it is reburied next to his relatives.
“Basotho believe in the lives of the dead,” Adv Sekonyela says, adding that they believe the soul lasts forever.

He says this cultural aspect is not only confined to Basotho.
He says some cultures also believe in their dead.

And this has been happening in the times of the Bible.
Adv Sekonyela quotes the Bible from Genesis 15:15 where God told Abraham that “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age”.He says this implies that Abraham had to be buried next to his ancestors.
His remains had to be taken to his original home.

He says burying the dead closer to their loved ones has deep cultural implications.
Adv Sekonyela says that is why when his father died he was returned to Malingoaneng to be laid to rest next to his family members.