SHARPEVILLE. - An 18-year-old teenager, Nthabiseng Motaung, and her family had to endure the worst experience of their lives when Nthabiseng stayed with her dead baby's body for five agonising hours in her Sharpeville home recently.
According to Motaung's sister, the child had been sick with flu recently and was taking medication, but last Friday at around 05:00, when she checked the child as she usually does, she realised that the child was not well.
"I then called the ambulance, whose personnel certified that the child was dead. They left a note saying that we had to wait for the police, who eventually came. They said that we had to find our own hearse to come and take the body," she says.
The child's body was finally removed by a private funeral parlour at around 10:00 in the morning, and the mother was taken to a neighbour's to avoid further torment.
Police spokesperson, Trudie Wilken, says that in cases like this where a person dies naturally, the family has to find their own hearse and the body must be removed by a mortuary organised by them. "If there is no foul play suspected, there is nothing we can do and the family will have to remove the body through a private undertaker," she says.