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TWO Bulawayo families almost came to blows at West Park Cemetery on Friday over where to bury their relative, leading to the cancellation of the burial.The dispute began when the late woman’s husband was told by his in-laws (the Sibandas) that he did not have the right to bury, let alone mourn, his wife because he had abandoned her when he crossed the border to South Africa in 2004.
They also said the woman had said she wanted to be buried next to her mother in rural Gwanda. But Mr Tellors Ncube (65) denied that he neglected his late wife Mrs Percy Ncube (59) and insisted that he had the right to bury her because she was his wife.
This resulted in a standoff that saw the two families setting up two funeral wakes with the Ncubes gathered in Mpopoma and the Sibandas in Entumbane.
The Sibanda family sent two elders to West Park Cemetery to protest against the burial of their daughter. The two elders are said to have found Mr Ncube, his relatives and friends in the process of laying Mrs Ncube to rest.
The two Sibandas are alleged to have confronted Mr Ncube and told him that he was burying one of their own without their blessings.
They stopped the burial.
Mr Ncube felt “disrespected” and “shamed” that he had been stopped from burying his wife. He and his relatives went to Mzilikazi Police Station to report the incident and seek police assistance to bury his wife without being harassed.
The police are said to have treated the issue as a civil matter and acted as mediators to break the standoff. The Sibanda family was adamant that Mr Ncube did not deserve to bury their daughter and wanted to bury her at their rural home in Gwanda.
But Mr Ncube insisted that it was not their right to decide the final resting place of his wife. After heated negotiations, Mr Ncube gave in and agreed to have his wife buried in Gwanda South’s Matshiya area. She was buried yesterday.
Dr Juliet Dube-Ndebele, the former Mpilo Hospital medical superintendent and niece of Mrs Ncube, accused Mr Ncube of “completely and utterly abdicating his matrimonial duties”.
She also accused him of poisoning Mrs Ncube. But Mr Ncube denied abandoning his wife saying he had gone to South Africa to look for a job to fend for his family.
Mr Ncube challenged Dr Dube-Ndebele to prove that he killed his wife.
“She must come here and say those things to my face and she must make sure that she has evidence to back those accusations,” he said.
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