Why I don’t want my cousins at my funeral

Ignatius Mabasa Shelling Nuts
My niece was a prostitute. Besides meeting the sexual needs of men in the ghetto for a fee, she also sold drugs, herbs and smuggled second-hand clothes. She was a single mother and she died of Aids leaving two young children behind. When she died, a group of rowdy young men and women with dead-looking eyes and dropping jaws resembling a drowning dog invaded her funeral, turning it into a chaotic drama.

They were bottom high drunk, uttering obscenities and exhibiting behaviour that the Shona would best describe as “hunhu hwakadyiwa nembwa”.

It is fortunate that imbwa yakadya hunhu ihwohwo haina kuzorutsa. This group openly smoked mbanje, sang, clapped and danced like possessed. The girls and women in the group were dressed like hell’s angels.

We could not reason with, or restrain this group because they were very loud and quarrelled with everybody, and even among themselves. The group was insisting on having a body viewing right away.

Also, they wanted to take the body for what they called a final and farewell tour of the ghetto. According to our culture, panhamo hapadzingwe munhu, and we could not chase these special mourners away.

My nephew was a hustler who lived her life to the dregs and this rowdy group was her company. The invasion of her funeral by her eccentric friends reminded me of someone who said: “I would rather be alone. It is better to be alone than to be in a wrong company. Show me who your best friends are, and I will tell you who you are. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. A mirror reflects a man’s face, but the type of friends he chooses, reflects what he truly is.”

Indeed, we got to know more about my dead nephew through her friends.

We had gathered as a family to do what relatives must do — to give my nephew a decent burial, but we had not anticipated what eventually happened. It took one of my aunties to throw a few punches and literally turn tables for the rowdy group to be temporarily subdued. Eventually the not so inebriated among them apologised and promised to behave.

What we didn’t know was that they were going to hire kombis and follow to the graveyard. There was pandemonium when they arrived and hijacked the burial, putting up extremely bizarre and mad performances.

Today, when some of us ask what this society is becoming, we are accused of being too moralistic. When I was growing up, death was feared and the dead were respected.

Today, young people are obsessed with demystifying almost everything — sex, life, drugs, taboos, death and most of them like my nephew are dying young.

What triggered this story is a video clip that I received via WhatsApp. The video revived memories of the madness I witnessed kuMbudzi when we went to bury my hustler nephew. The video I am talking about shows a group of young women clad in leopard print mini dresses at a burial. These women dance wildly and provocatively next to an open grave.

The dances are so bad you really wonder whether the deceased had no relatives or family elders to regulate such lewdness at a family event. Later on in that video, some music is played and the girls take turns to gyrate and lift their mini dresses exposing their panties.

The clip ends when one decently dressed woman runs to save the situation before the girls start to strip!

This is not the first time that I have witnessed this kind of disruptive behaviour at a funeral. It seems as if this behaviour is fast becoming a fashion and the way to have a funeral and a burial particularly for dead touts, robbers, prostitutes, vendors, kombi drivers and boozers soccer players.

The first time I encountered this behaviour was when I lost my brother and we were singing church songs waiting for the pastor to start the graveside service. Suddenly and in a very dramatic manner, there were cars that drove into the cemetery and sent mourners scampering for safety among the graves and tombstones. This newly arrived group was made up of young men and women and they were wilder than wild horses. They screamed, they danced and played music. I remember one church elder going to make a police report.

Later, we were told that the deceased was a known criminal from Cherima in Highfield and he was a big spender on drugs, women, booze and cars.

The other incident took place at the burial of one of my uncles who was a boozers’ soccer coach. He died poor, but his love for soccer and developing local talent was very well known. I used to respect him as one of my oldest living uncles, but I lost all admiration during his funeral and burial. The way the local women and also the drunk soccer players took turns to perform his life for us and the things they said, which they attributed to him shocked me. I never imagined that my old man’s mouth could shape and say some of the things that they were saying. Then there was the soccer playing at the funeral. In the end, the funeral became a comedy and the speeches and prayers were drowned by the madness that engulfed the cemetery.

The other time, I witnessed another show of moral decadence and rank madness when a kombi driver died in Kambuzuma. The kombi drivers and the touts drove in a convoy to one of the local soccer grounds. One of the kombis was carrying the body of the deceased on its roof. Whether they had asked the family to be given the coffin with the body or not, I can’t tell.

When they got to the soccer ground, they placed the coffin on the ground and started shouting, singing and doing crazy stunts with their kombis.

They drove at very high speeds, swerved and skidded to the cheers, gasps and screams by the audience that had gathered to witness the event. They drove through the goal posts and shouted, “Go bhoraaaaaa!” Eventually, one of the speeding kombis overturned and landed on its side, but was quickly pushed back on its wheels and drove off. What a send-off!

Last month in Chitungwiza, one young man who was stabbed and died at one of the popular markets called “speed” in Unit L had a similar send-off. Drunk youths were singing and toyi-toying exhibiting to the public the coffin with his dead body.

No one was in charge of the madness, and I wonder in what state the body was when they eventually buried it.

But just listening to the story of this dead young man’s life and how he died, one can only pray for a future generation that does not want the Mafia and The Godfather movie type of life to become our reality. This Unit L incident reminded me of yet another story about a funeral in Mbare where a notorious robber had died. It is said his friends took the dead body to the police station and told the police that they had brought in the person who was on their wanted list.

Whether this Mbare story is an urban legend or a true story, I will never be able to see eye to eye with this generation because of so many things that are morally wrong. I have been accused of being old fashioned, but I believe there is a difference between being principled and being old fashioned.

I also have been accused of moralising about life, but morals are the fabric that holds a people, and I have to stand for something and not just anything and  everything.

I wonder how funerals will be conducted fifty years from today. I think they will become a combination of fashion shows and orgies with music. For that reason, when I die, I would want a very private funeral — and if possible by invitation only.

It is true as the Shona saying goes that, “vakafa havana chavakaona,” but I would rather die than to be buried violently like this. And when we say, “vakafa vakazorora,” how can the dead rest when drunk youths carry, shake, toss and desecrate corpses like that? I think it is true that life hurts more than death.