Johannesburg - The City of Joburg’s City Parks and Zoo is tackling the issue of homeless people invading dormant cemeteries after hours, turning them into sleeping places.
In the past week, City Parks and Zoo had been conducting clean-up operations to restore the integrity of Brixton and Braamfontein cemeteries.
The team found most of the displaced people who had taken shelter there, willingly removed structures and belongings and left before the clean-up began. However, once the operations team left the site, the displaced people returned.
The issue of invasion of cemeteries is experienced in even developed world cities like Vancouver and New York City.
On Monday, City Parks and Zoo general manager Jenny Moodley said social services was present during the clean-up operation and only a few displaced persons opted to be transported to a shelter.
“For reasons known only to them, these people do not want to live in transitional shelters that the city provides them.”
Moodley said that based on the information gathered globally, where most cities were grappling with displaced persons due to drug dependencies; poverty, mental wellness; illegal migration and such issues. Joburg City
Parks and Zoo had been at the forefront of robust discussions to interrogate more compassionate courses of action to deal with the issue.
“While the priority is to respect and protect the sanctity of the city’s cemeteries, the city also has a moral responsibility to take care of the most vulnerable living among us,“ Moodley said.
Identifying neglected spaces taken up by dilapidated infrastructure and using it for new burial space, creating some form of transitional shelter or encouraging carefully considered activities would go a long way towards protecting and preserving the rich heritage found in dormant cemeteries, which are over a century old such as Brixton Cemetery, Moodley said.
She said that in the interim, the City of Joburg, under the instruction of the city manager, would ensure that a new secure fence was installed, security officials were assisted with a canine unit to patrol the perimeters, all dilapidated structures that had been vandalised and were a safety hazard would be removed, in consultation with heritage services. Basic cleaning of all waste material and tree branches hoarded by displaced people would also be removed.
Moodley said the Joburg City Parks and Zoo had adequate burial space – more than a million spaces – to accommodate burials in the next four to five decades and had no plans to reuse burial grounds.
The Star