Inter Press Service - August 18, 2003
Wilson Johwa

Some of the men are on bicycles. Most are walking briskly and very few are in their own vehicles. Together they could be mistaken for devout Christians, yet church services are not on their minds.

This Sunday crowd makes up the membership of Zimbabwe's many burial societies, clubs to which members pay monthly subscriptions redeemable only when there is bereavement in the family.

Typically, members of such a society meet in a beer hall, to take advantage of the space and quiet on a Sunday morning.

Like other burial societies that have meetings here, Mutare Home Burial Society has its own place: under the shade of a jacaranda tree in Khongo Beer Hall, a nondescript beer garden. Today about 30 of the society's 76 members have turned up for the meeting - a highly organized and strictly controlled affair - where latecomers are fined, as are those who turn up without the society's navy blue blazer and court of arms.

Still, not everyone could make it. But almost all members are up to date in subscriptions. Nobody is willing to tempt nature with overdue subs.

The society was formed in 1973 by workers who originated from the Mutare area, 600 kilometres away, in the eastern highlands of the country. They sought to contribute towards a kind of funeral policy for themselves and their families, since they were so far away from the extended family.

Today, in addition to the monthly subscriptions, members contribute toward the Christmas party and also a 'refund' since last month the society paid out a funeral benefit of 80 000 Zimbabwean dollars (30 United States dollars) to a member who lost his wife. Hence, they are returning this money to the pool in accordance with their constitution.

The quiet discussion heats up when someone complains that apart from the club's president, none of the other members bothered to spend the night at the latest funeral in keeping with African custom and the society's very principles.

The chairman of the club unintentionally stokes the fire when he says due to the difficult times in the country; it would be unfair to expect all members to travel to every funeral, given the shortage of fuel and high cost of transport. In any case, he says, too many mourners at a funeral would increase the food bill of the bereaved member.

The chairman is scolded by someone who says: "We are here for funerals and death has no distance. Members who do not attend funerals must be penalized. Personally, I'd rather you don't come to see me when I'm ill but when I die I expect you to be at my funeral."

The argument, typical of a burial society, rages on.

All around Mutare Home Burial Society, similar groups of people are engrossed in the same business. The nearest is Zivai Rufu (which means 'fear death') Burial Society 1974 Ltd, that still attracts people from Gutu, a rural district some 400 kilometres away.

All across the country, such fraternities abound. The concept originated from Bulawayo in the seventies when, through work, Shona-speakers from the northern part of the country found themselves separated from their kith and kin who would otherwise assist them in the event of a bereavement.

As they had always socialised with their "home-boys", these ties grew into burial societies. With a decent burial being so important in African culture, the idea was to have a savings guild whose proceeds would come in handy when a member died or had to travel back home to bury a close relative.

The concept spread to other parts of the country, including Harare and has since spawned loosely constituted church and neighbourhood support groups with similar intentions.

With an estimated 2 000 Zimbabweans dying every week due to HIV-related illnesses, burial societies are more relevant now than ever before.

But the amounts that each burial society gives out for a bereavement is normally not enough to cover the full cost of a funeral. The result is that most people are members of more than one burial society.

Dora Tavengwa, a mother of three, is a member of four associations: a church group, a neighbourhood community initiative and two women's clubs. "For me it's a form of saving," she says; "There is no-one burial society that can give me enough for a funeral."

Dora's husband also belongs to a separate burial society. "The advantage with the women's clubs is that they will give me money to bury even my married daughter or any child, even those above 21," she says.

Leonard Nkala, the councilor for Mpopoma, says burial societies have been a very useful safety net without which more households would have been unable to bury their dead.

"There would be very very serious problems and we'd actually have more of pauper burials than the decent burials we are having right now," he says.

Nkala's constituency has 4 000 households or 28 000 people. He says over the last three years he has had only three pauper burials, which shows that burial societies "are really serving a purpose."

Some, he says, "have even developed to such an extent that they are now able to use their own trucks to ferry their colleagues and even hire out some of the trucks, which is a form of investing in the society."

Rubatsiro Makoni is among Bulawayo's prominent burial societies. Unlike many other societies, its monthly meeting is no longer held in a beer garden but in a community hall. "We are guided by the bible and therefore we can't have meetings where other people are drinking alcohol," says the society's chairman, Phillip Mandaza.

The association, which draws its name from people who originated from the Makoni area of Rusape in the country's north-western province, is also one of the city's biggest burial societies. Its membership only recently declined from 400 to 280 due to lay-offs, retirement and death.

"Of late we've been having many members dying, often both husband and wife," says Mandaza, who has been a member since 1978.

However, he is under no illusion that the death benefit of 100 000 dollars (40 US dollars) payable when a member or his wife dies, is enough to meet all funeral expenses. "We can't cover the whole process, we simply assist."

Membership of Rubatsiro Makoni is open to all but nowadays preference is given to the offspring of existing members, making it easier to trace family ties. The risk of admitting strangers is that there is no way of checking if they do not already have terminally ill dependents.

Although it takes three months to be approved as a member, after paying the joining fee of 35 000 dollars, the new member enjoys the same benefits as any other member.

Still, the society - like many others - is attracting little interest from the younger age groups who do not relish the idea of sitting in long meetings with old men set in their ways, or attending the funerals of people they did not even know, all for the sake of African brotherhood.

However, Rubatsiro Makoni is cash-rich. Unlike Mutare Home Burial Society, members do not pay extra when there has been a death. The society has invested its monies on the money market where there is little risk.

Using some of these excess funds for riskier income-generating projects would create new challenges that the society's 10 volunteer executive members are not willing to deal with. "It once came into our minds but after looking at the administration side, we dropped it," Mandaza says.

Funerals, it seems, are after all the sole business of Zimbabwe's scores of burial societies. (ENDS/IPS/AF/SA/CR/WJ/SM/03)

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