'I can't talk about it anymore'

2007-04-02 09:02

Marelize Barnard

Cape Town - An undertaker is being taken to court for allegedly giving the wrong ashes to a boy's family in November last year, while the boy's body lay decomposing in a mortuary for several months.

Kevin McDonald from Parow said he was devastated to learn last week that his son, who died in November last year, had not been cremated at all.

"What I saw... I don't want to talk about it anymore. I will never forget it."

It turned out the container that was being looked after by the 15-year-old boy's granny did not hold his ashes. If they proved to be human ashes, there could well be another family somewhere with the wrong ashes.

Unable to sleep

What made matters worse, was to have to identify his boy's decomposing remains in a mortuary. McDonald said he was unable to sleep since then.

His nightmare began last Thursday when a pastor informed him that the body of his son Herman was still at Cabashe funeral service's mortuary at Epping in Cape Town.

Apparently Viwe Grawana-Ngcongca, the owner of Cabashe, had been trying to trace Herman's family because she wanted to cremate the remains on Friday.

Carol Crous of Rondesbosch, Herman's grandmother said on Sunday that several weeks after her grandson's funeral on November 3 last year she was still struggling to get the boy's ashes, so she called at the home of Adam de Vries, of De Vries funeral services.

"De Vries's wife was home. She called him on the cellphone, and he arrived home. He went into the back of the house and came out with a box," Crous said.

Since then she has kept the container of ashes in her flat.

"Little did I know that the child had never been cremated. Whose ashes are these?" Crous wanted to know.

Grawana-Ngcongca explained to Die Burger that De Vries did not have refrigerating facilities and he stored his cadavers at Cabashe.

"He came back that Friday with the body and said the crematorium was busy - or that he was late. He said he would come back on the Monday, but he never did," Grawana-Ngcongca said.

She said it had been difficult to trace Herman's family and "De Vries was nowhere to be found."

"Being a funeral undertaker is not child's play. The emotions of families are involved, it's their loved ones. Now they must come to terms with the entire cremation from scratch," Grawana-Ngcongca said.

De Vries maintained that he did not know that Herman's body had not been cremated.

He confirmed that he used the refrigerating facilities at the Epping funeral service.

De Vries said he had taken Herman's body to the crematorium after the funeral on the Friday, but it was too late. At first he said he could not remember on what day he had taken the body to the crematorium again, but later he recalled that it was on the Monday after the memorial service.

De Vries said he was no longer really in the funeral business, after having suffered two heart attacks in December.

His son had taken over the business.

The ashes, which he showed to Die Burger on Sunday, were scheduled to be taken to the police on Monday for forensic testing.

McDonald has filed fraud charges with the Elsies River police.

- Die Burger