by Wilson Johwa
BULAWAYO, Aug 18 (IPS) - It's the first Sunday of the month.
On the streets in Mpopoma - a working class area - many adults, both men and
women but especially men, are distinguishable by their smart ties and dark
blazers.
Some of the men are on bicycles. Most are walking briskly and very few are in
their own vehicles. Together they could be mistaken for devout Christians, yet
church services are not on their minds.
This Sunday crowd makes up the membership of Zimbabwe's many burial societies,
clubs to which members pay monthly subscriptions redeemable only when there is
bereavement in the family.
Typically, members of such a society meet in a beer hall, to take advantage of
the space and quiet on a Sunday morning.
Like other burial societies that have meetings here, Mutare Home Burial Society
has its own place: under the shade of a jacaranda tree in Khongo Beer Hall, a
nondescript beer garden. Today about 30 of the society's 76 members have turned
up for the meeting - a highly organized and strictly controlled affair - where
latecomers are fined, as are those who turn up without the society's navy blue
blazer and court of arms.
Still, not everyone could make it. But almost all members are up to date in
subscriptions. Nobody is willing to tempt nature with overdue subs.
The society was formed in 1973 by workers who originated from the Mutare area,
600 kilometres away, in the eastern highlands of the country. They sought to
contribute towards a kind of funeral policy for themselves and their families,
since they were so far away from the extended family.
Today, in addition to the monthly subscriptions, members contribute toward the
Christmas party and also a 'refund' since last month the society paid out a
funeral benefit of 80 000 Zimbabwean dollars (30 United States dollars) to a
member who lost his wife. Hence, they are returning this money to the pool in
accordance with their constitution.
The quiet discussion heats up when someone complains that apart from the club's
president, none of the other members bothered to spend the night at the latest
funeral in keeping with African custom and the society's very principles.
The chairman of the club unintentionally stokes the fire when he says due to the
difficult times in the country; it would be unfair to expect all members to
travel to every funeral, given the shortage of fuel and high cost of transport.
In any case, he says, too many mourners at a funeral would increase the food
bill of the bereaved member.
The chairman is scolded by someone who says: ”We are here for funerals and
death has no distance. Members who do not attend funerals must be penalized.
Personally, I'd rather you don't come to see me when I'm ill but when I die I
expect you to be at my funeral.”
The argument, typical of a burial society, rages on.
All around Mutare Home Burial Society, similar groups of people are engrossed in
the same business. The nearest is Zivai Rufu (which means 'fear death') Burial
Society 1974 Ltd, that still attracts people from Gutu, a rural district some
400 kilometres away.
All across the country, such fraternities abound. The concept originated from
Bulawayo in the seventies when, through work, Shona-speakers from the northern
part of the country found themselves separated from their kith and kin who would
otherwise assist them in the event of a bereavement.
As they had always socialised with their ”home-boys”, these ties grew into
burial societies. With a decent burial being so important in African culture,
the idea was to have a savings guild whose proceeds would come in handy when a
member died or had to travel back home to bury a close relative.
The concept spread to other parts of the country, including Harare and has since
spawned loosely constituted church and neighbourhood support groups with similar
intentions.
With an estimated 2 000 Zimbabweans dying every week due to HIV-related
illnesses, burial societies are more relevant now than ever before.
But the amounts that each burial society gives out for a bereavement is normally
not enough to cover the full cost of a funeral. The result is that most people
are members of more than one burial society. Dora Tavengwa, a mother of
three, is a member of four associations: a church group, a neighbourhood
community initiative and two women's clubs. ”For me it's a form of saving,”
she says; ”There is no-one burial society that can give me enough for a
funeral.”
Dora's husband also belongs to a separate burial society. ”The advantage with
the women's clubs is that they will give me money to bury even my married
daughter or any child, even those above 21,” she says.
Leonard Nkala, the councilor for Mpopoma, says burial
societies have been a very useful safety net without which more households would
have been unable to bury their dead.
”There would be very very serious problems and we'd actually have more of
pauper burials than the decent burials we are having right now,” he says.
Nkala's constituency has 4 000 households or 28 000 people. He says over the
last three years he has had only three pauper burials, which shows that burial
societies ”are really serving a purpose.”
Some, he says, ”have even developed to such an extent that they are now able
to use their own trucks to ferry their colleagues and even hire out some of the
trucks, which is a form of investing in the society.”
Rubatsiro Makoni is among Bulawayo's prominent burial societies. Unlike many
other societies, its monthly meeting is no longer held in a beer garden but in a
community hall. ”We are guided by the bible and therefore we can't have
meetings where other people are drinking alcohol,” says the society's
chairman, Phillip Mandaza.
The association, which draws its name from people who originated from the Makoni
area of Rusape in the country's north-western province, is also one of the
city's biggest burial societies. Its membership only recently declined from 400
to 280 due to lay-offs, retirement and death.
”Of late we've been having many members dying, often both husband and wife,”
says Mandaza, who has been a member since 1978.
However, he is under no illusion that the death benefit of 100 000 dollars (40
US dollars) payable when a member or his wife dies, is enough to meet all
funeral expenses. ”We can't cover the whole process, we simply assist.”
Membership of Rubatsiro Makoni is open to all but nowadays preference is given
to the offspring of existing members, making it easier to trace family ties. The
risk of admitting strangers is that there is no way of checking if they do not
already have terminally ill dependents.
Although it takes three months to be approved as a member, after paying the
joining fee of 35 000 dollars, the new member enjoys the same benefits as any
other member.
Still, the society - like many others - is attracting little interest from the
younger age groups who do not relish the idea of sitting in long meetings with
old men set in their ways, or attending the funerals of people they did not even
know, all for the sake of African brotherhood.
However, Rubatsiro Makoni is cash-rich. Unlike Mutare Home Burial Society,
members do not pay extra when there has been a death. The society has invested
its monies on the money market where there is little risk.
Using some of these excess funds for riskier income-generating projects would
create new challenges that the society's 10 volunteer executive members are not
willing to deal with. ”It once came into our minds but after looking at the
administration side, we dropped it,” Mandaza says.
Funerals, it seems, are after all the sole business of Zimbabwe's scores of
burial societies.