The efforts being made by Ward 7 to save and restore the De Wet Street cemetery are admirable.
But to be really honest, it is a losing battle in the current climate in which cemeteries are becoming more obsolete.
With the cemetery divided into areas designated to certain churches, the time has come to think outside the box about how to maintain it as a whole and how to make it safe.
As soon as a fixture – a wall or fence – is put up it is stolen again.
Vagrants have lived in the cemetery for years now and desecrating the graves has become par for the course.
People who visit there are not safe. Across the street, schoolchildren are being robbed and attacked.
The situation has reached a critical point and can go one of two ways. Firstly, the parties that own some of the land there, and are still interested, can gather and deliberate on how best to go about working together as a collective to maintain and secure the area.
The other option, almost too awful to contemplate, as it will inevitably lead to the cemetery falling into total disrepair, is just not to care, for in 30 years loved ones who have visited the graves will themselves have passed on and their children’s children will be oblivious.
Alas, this is the reality of the times we live in, what with traditional ways of disposing of the dead also overtaken by newer methods.
