“It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of funerals in South African life. Funerals serve to honour the dead, who are entering a new life as ‘ancestors’. In addition, funerals mark the deceased’s status (and that of his family) within the community. They also strengthen ties with neighbours and extended family, who may travel long distances to attend a funeral. More than any other single rite of passage – births, graduations, marriages – funerals provide a focal point for family and community life.”

The quote above is from a research paper titled Paying the Piper: The High Cost of Funerals in South Africa, published in 2013, and co-authored by a team of four spread across the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. The authors analysed the funeral arrangements following the deaths of some 3,751 people across a three-year period between January 2003 and December 2005.

Beyond their cultural significance, funeral rites are big business in South Africa, estimated to generate between R7.5-billion and R10-billion a year in revenue. Among black South Africans in particular, a funeral is typically held over the weekend, on a Saturday, with a large number of people attending, including extended family, friends, colleagues and members of the community. All of whom will then have to be fully catered for. The costs to host increasingly elaborate funerals add up, and they have resulted in a thriving informal and formal funeral insurance industry.

According to the Centre for Financial Regulation and Inclusion (CENFRI), a non-profit think tank, funeral insurance is the biggest driver of insurance usage in South Africa, with 89.2% of adults who have risk cover also including some sort of funeral cover in the mix. And based on ongoing research by FinMark Trust, between 2004 and 2016, funeral insurance uptake went from 34% to 62%, while non-funeral cover declined from 13% to 7% in the same period.

Historically, the nature of the modern South African funeral was shaped in part by movement and prohibitions to movement, specifically the migration patterns forced on black South Africans by the apartheid labour infrastructure, as well as the gold rush earlier.

“Funerals have drastically changed over the years. When we started in this business, it was very simple to conduct a funeral, much less complicated. It was also easy to manage the people attending the funerals. But then as years went by, it became more complicated and expensive. A lot of changes took place,” says Libo Mnisi, the current president of the South African Funeral Practitioners’ Association (SAFPA) which has over 900 members, and is the largest organisation of black funeral professionals in South Africa. He is also the owner of Mpumalanga-based Mvuleni Funeral services, which he established in 1983 with his father.

Mnisi adds that in recent years, funerals did shift in shape and form: “I call funerals these days ‘forced socialising’. People go and buy new clothing for the funeral; they’ll go to show off their cars. Whatever they can get a chance to show off they’ll do it at the funerals, because people have less time to socialise these days. Even the bereaved want to show off to their friends and colleagues that ‘my dad or my mother is being buried in such an expensive coffin, and these are the cars that have been hired’.”

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown the proverbial spanner in the works when it comes to this particular rite of passage. Under the current lockdown regulations, only 50 people are allowed to attend a funeral. Night vigils, which would typically be held a whole week prior to the funeral, are prohibited. Movement between provinces to attend funerals is also very limited for all but immediate family.

Historically, the nature of the modern South African funeral was shaped in part by movement and prohibitions to movement, specifically the migration patterns forced on black South Africans by the apartheid labour infrastructure, as well as the gold rush earlier.

In her paper for the International African Institute, titled “Funeral Businesses in South Africa”, University of London lecturer Rebekah Lee writes about some of the earliest forms of informal funeral related cover among migrant mine workers in the late 19^th century: “The prospect of being separated from one’s ancestral home even in death – and buried without traditional burial rites administered through appropriate social and kin network – was a fearful one, and motivated African migrants on the mines to construct South Africa’s first burial societies to prevent such an eventuality.

“These informal funeral-finance associations tended to emphasize processes of ethnic identification already at work in mining compounds, and aided in the transport of the deceased body and mourners back to the society’s ‘home’ area. The creation of cemeteries on mine property at the turn of the 20th century and the tendency of mining companies to bury Africans hastily in unmarked graves at the lowest possible expense only served to reinforce in the minds of their employees the convictions that a mine burial was to be avoided at all costs.” Lee goes on to cite the efficacy of this strategy on the part of the miners by noting that by 1955, nine of these employer-built cemeteries had ceased to exist.

“The reason we do most of our funerals on Saturdays or on weekends is because most of our people, black people, were migrant labourers. We would only be allowed to go home and conduct a funeral on a weekend. So it sort of inculcated the culture of doing funerals over the weekend,” says Mnisi.

Since the lockdown regulations came into effect, Mnisi notes that he, as well as other funeral directors registered with SAFPA, have seen an increase in funerals held on weekdays: “People have also realised that it is cheaper to do funerals during the week because you don’t put more pressure on the funeral director, we don’t have to buy a lot of cars. We don’t have to employ a lot of people, and it makes the situation very relaxed and it becomes cost-effective for each and every one of the communities that we are serving.”

While the way funerals are conducted in South Africa might seem like a static part of South African culture that hasn’t changed a lot, a look at the increased spending, ever fancier caskets and expensive tombstones is a reminder that the South African funeral has evolved and transformed many times over the last century. Much of that change is a response to external influences, be it involuntary migration one end, or simply keeping up appearances on the other.

While Mnisi says that many of his and his colleagues’ clients have accepted the changes, in the beginning they struggled to get their clients to abide by them: “There is resistance on the part of the communities that we are serving. They don’t take those regulations as something that is meant to protect them. They look at it as something that is meant to victimise them or to disrespect their cultures. But gradually as we go through the stages people are beginning to understand; they see people in their communities dying because of Covid.”

Still, Mnisi says that each and every week, there are still families who argue with funeral directors because they do not understand the reasoning behind the regulations. A part of the responsibility to enforce regulations then falls upon the funeral directors. In addition to explaining regulations to clients, Mnisi and his colleagues have taken measures to create a funeral environment that makes it simpler to get clients to abide.

They’ve stopped hiring out and setting up marquees at funerals: “Once you set up a tent, you are simply saying: this is the place where you have to converge. And it’s not easy… it’s not easy to control the families and get them to sit one metre away from each other. So we agreed that we won’t be putting up tents outside the homes where funerals are held like we usually do.”

They’ve also limited elaborate setups at graveyards, where there would typically be a gazebo, a carpet and chairs where the family of the deceased would sit for the final part of the service: “The chairs that are used there can easily transmit the coronavirus, because they are moved from funeral to funeral, and so you are just spreading this disease. So we said ‘let’s use these things as minimally as possible so we do not spread this coronavirus’.”

While the way funerals are conducted in South Africa might seem like a static part of South African culture that hasn’t changed a lot, a look at the increased spending, ever fancier caskets and expensive tombstones is a reminder that the South African funeral has evolved and transformed many times over the last century. Much of that change is a response to external influences, be it involuntary migration one end, or simply keeping up appearances on the other.

How long the coronavirus will be with us is as yet unclear. What lasting changes will remain as society changes behaviour to respond to it is also unclear. However, with four decades in the business behind him, and having watched funerals transform over time from smaller to more elaborate affairs, Mnisi reckons this moment in time will have a lasting impact on funeral rites in South Africa; at the very least, a significant economic impact on his industry.

Says Mnisi: “Fewer people are paying a lot of money for funerals, they buy less of the expensive coffins. They just want to bury their loved ones, and they don’t care to show off as much. The funeral industry is going to feel the pinch because we make most of our money on expensive coffins. We are going to take a knock because we bought these cars and we build the structures to cater for these funerals. When they buy less expensive coffins, who is going to pay for these cars? If you had, say, 50 employees that are conducting funerals, you sort of use only half your employees now, while 25 are staying at home and not working. So as funeral directors we are already restructuring our companies to deal with the possibility of a different future.” DM/ ML