Death is not something most people like to dwell on.
But for Renoldah Kgole, it’s part of her everyday life. Well not death, exactly, as much as the rituals of burying the dead. Kgole is an official in the Magashula Burial Society.
The society is made up predominantly of people from the Sebediela area in Limpopo now living in Gauteng but who, should they die here, want to return home to be buried alongside their family.
And I meet Kgole, who is a teaching assistant at a pre-primary school in Westcliff. She paints a picture of an organisation that is as much about being connected to a community as it is about burial requirements.
Not only is it a service to members, she says, it is a touchstone and link back to their community far away. Members are assured that, should anything happen to them, someone they trust will be there to see them home and settle them among their loved ones.
”It’s a family,” she tells me. ”If we have a problem we help each other.”
Like many such societies in South Africa, Magashula Burial Society collects payments from members, in this case R30 each month. The members have uniforms by which they can recognise each other, their executives and officials who are elected by vote.
Kgole explains that the monthly fee covers the primary member and any children that they may have, as well as their mother and father. However, a child who has left school and started working is not covered.
It costs R1 200 to join, with a probation period of three months. The joining fee can be paid over the three months, as can the purchase of the uniform. Dress code is strictly adhered to, with fines issued if a member is not in uniform during meetings and funerals.
If someone is in hospital or unable to work, their fees are covered by the society until such time as they are able to begin payments again.
Payments cover the care of a body at the mortuary, the coffin purchase, the transport of the body back home and the hire of transport for society members to attend the funeral and the service. If possible, everyone in the society attends to pay due respect to their former colleague.
A clear set of ”rules” is drawn up, taken to a local police station and signed, affidavit style, with approval of all members. They are annually reviewed.
The society does not shell out for tombstones or lavish spreads at funerals.
”That is for rich people,” says Kgole. ”The main thing is that you are with your ancestors and that you rest in peace.”
South Africa’s funeral industry has a good number of companies like Dove Funeral Services and Avbob that provide services to the well healed and large insurance companies like Hollard or Old Mutual that offer expensive life cover.
However, there is a large informal sector that caters to the poor. These informal societies operate under regulatory radar and can be a recipe for exploitation.
The National Treasury’s most recent figures on the micro-insurance sector, the blanket term under which the funeral business falls, are from 2006.
According to them, of the reported funeral insurance usage, a large proportion is through informal burial societies or potential illegal insurers.
Around 33% or 6.5-million individuals in the 1-5 LSM (living standards measure) category have some form of funeral insurance.
Of this group 63% or 4.1-million people are members of an informal burial society and 52% or 3.4-million are members of a burial society, meaning they use no other funeral insurance products.
About 28% or 1.8-million indicated that they have funeral cover deemed to be illegal such as cover through a funeral parlour.
In April last year the first steps were taken by the National Treasury and the FSB to begin regulating the micro-insurance sector, the blanket term under which the funeral operators would fall.
According to Thoraya Pandy, spokesperson for the Treasury, a number of motivations led to the need to institute the proposed Micro-insurance legislation, including the need to ”address particular challenges — relating to unregulated players — and aspects of abuses detected in the current system”.
But the decision was also based on the need to develop this market by removing unnecessary barriers to entry and facilitating broader participation says Pandy.
This would include reducing the capital requirements for long-term and short-term insurers, limiting the operational requirements and allowing additional types of legal persons to operate under the micro-insurance regime.
But while this process is underway Magashule Burial Society will continue tending to its members and Kgole will serve the society that saw to her mother’s burial. And by the looks of things, this group won’t need much regulation to insure they all rest in peace.
