The remains of a 94-year old stalwart, founding member and senior committee member of the Zion Apostolic Faith Mission Church Maseru faces the indignity of exhumation following a brutal row between her family and the authorities.
The late Nkatsa Alinah Moorosi was buried on July 27, 2024 in the grounds of the church at Motimposo in Maseru.
Motimposo falls under area chief Leloko Theko.
The Moorosi family was allegedly initially granted verbal consent by the Maseru City Council (MCC) on July 22 to bury the deceased at the cemetery on the church’s premises.
However, in a letter dated July 26, 2024 MCC cemetery master Rethabile Lesekele advised Nkatsa’s granddaughter, Nthabeleng Moorosi, of the revocation of the permission.
The letter indicated that the permission to bury her grandmother on the said piece of land at Ha Lion had been erroneously granted.
“You blindsided MCC when you produced a letter from a chief (of Ha Tṧiu), which purportedly allocated the gravesite, whereas the said chief has no jurisdiction.
“When MCC learnt of the anomaly, it informed you in a phone call that it was revoking that permission, and invited you to reapply for a new application at a designated cemetery at Lepereng. But you did not do that.
“MCC was subsequently alerted by the local councillor that you were going ahead with burial preparations at the Ha Lion cemetery, notwithstanding,” the municipal letter indicated.
The council also told Nthabeleng that it is against the Land Act of 2010 to bury a corpse in an unauthorised piece of land.
It also warned her that if she did not desist from doing so, she would be reported to the police.
Nthabeleng told theReporter on Monday this week that she only received the letter on Friday, when it was already all-systems-go for the family to bury Nkatsa.
She claimed she had been given the go-ahead by MCC officer, Litaba Donald Lemao, to bury her grandmother using the top-on-top method (on top of another corpse, in this case the deceased’s son).
This, she added, went on to be approved after two officers from MCC came to the burial site to inspect its suitability.
“Before that, Ntate Lemao asked me on July 16 to produce a death certificate as proof that my uncle had died 10 years ago. MCC then gave me permission to bury my grandmother on top of him. Now they have reneged and are threatening me with a court order and exhumation, for no reasons.
“I haven’t seen see eye to eye with Chief Leloko of Motimposo since 2015, so my brothers are the ones who approached him in connection with the request for a grave site. He turned them down, citing I had opposed his attempt to have his own father buried in the same church premises two years ago.
“That’s why I went to Ha Tṥiu where the chief appended his official stamp to request for grave land, which I took to MCC.
“The MCC officers came here the following day (Tuesday) to inspect the site and gave us the green light for the burial. They did this verbally.
“On Wednesday, one Rethabile Lesekele called me from MCC accusing me of having played her when I omitted to tell her there was bad blood between Chief Leloko and me. I told her it was not my place to do so,” she added.
Commenting on the manner, the area chief of Motimposo, Chief Leloko Theko, denied he was at war with the Moorosi family, but maintained they had crossed the line.
“They came to my office to report the death, and I promptly wrote a letter they would require to apply for a death certificate. They showed me a letter requesting a top-on-top burial at the church cemetery.
“I told them that practice does not apply anymore; so they proceeded to Ha Tṥiu to a village chief who did not have the authority to stamp the letter.
“They later went to MCC, and we were surprised to see them forcibly bury nkhono on that prohibited plot,” he told this publication in an interview on Wednesday.
In another development, Archbishop Godfrey Emmanuel Lion of the Zion Apostolic Faith Mission Church stated that the church had indeed given the Moorosi family permission to bury the deceased at the church cemetery.
Lion said it was befitting and proper that Moorosi was buried on the church premises, given that that she was one of its founding members.
“It is the prerogative of the church to bury its member on its property, especially someone who was a stalwart like Moorosi.
“That site is private property which belongs to the church, and we have our own laws and ways of doing things.
“The constitution of our church prescribes that, I as its head, have the powers to decide that, as a stalwart, Moorosi should be buried on our grounds. I told the family to navigate their way around securing a permit to bury her here, and it was granted,” Lion said in an interview with theReporter yesterday, from South Africa where he is based.
He threatened to take the matter up with undisclosed government officials.
Attempts to get a comment from MCC were unsuccessful, with the public relations officer ‘Makatleho Mosala only describing the matter as ‘sensitive’, and promising she would only be able to discuss it next week.
In 2014, MCC exhumed a body from same Zion Apostolic Faith Mission Church cemetery two weeks after burial, on grounds that the interment posed serious health hazards to the surrounding community.
After the exhumation, the body was reburied at the Lepereng cemetery, with the MCC bearing the costs.
At the time, Mosala told the media that the deceased was not supposed to be buried on the church premises as that was against the council’s by-laws.
“The body was buried… in contravention of the Lesotho Land Act of 2010 and Public Health Order Number 1970.
“This land is not supposed to be used as a cemetery but to build a church, and when one applies for a lease, he or she has to specify how the land is going to be utilised. That is why we cannot have a church and a graveyard in the same yard.
“It is not healthy for a graveyard to be located close to people’s homes because when it rains, the water flows from the graves to the houses, which is not hygienic and a potential health hazard,” she said then.
Ironically, the council a few years ago allowed a local church in Maseru to bury a senior leader inside the church.
