Harare Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda says council is exploring prospects of encouraging cremation instead of the traditional underground burial.
"There is a certain timeline where cemeteries will be full and we still need land for development purposes - so cremation is the only possible solution," he says.
While big cities offer people many advantages over rural life, there are some drawbacks and societies and customs often have to change. There is already a problem in housing, while most people would like to have detached houses on decent sized plots, this is impossible for Harare unless the city is destined to expand its boundaries to Darwendale, Mazowe and Marondera.
Flats, terraces and cluster houses are the unavoidable solutions if people are to live within anything resembling a sensible distance from work. The cemetery problem is similar. Even if more land is made available, it will in time be filled with graves and even more farms will have to be bought and filled with the dead. It is impossible for the process to continue forever and sooner rather than later we are going to have to decide whether it would be better for available land to be used to grow food for the living or provide graves for the dead.
One part of the problem is the idea of a permanent grave containing a single body for everyone. In all cultures, on all continents this is a relatively new concept. In the past kings and emperors and the like might have had their own permanent graves, but the ordinary people were never granted this right.
A grave might last a century or two at most and then be forgotten and lost. In time the remains would have been broken down. Zimbabwe is not an exception - but how many graves are more than a century old, which can be identified?
However, modern custom has brought in the permanent grave or memorial for all. City managers, just like Harare, throughout the world now have the problem of finding land to bury the dead.
In some countries cremation has become the accepted way. This solves the problem of finding ever-more costly land, while still giving families the opportunity to erect permanent memories for their deceased relatives. Most Zimbabweans dislike intensely the idea of cremation. The desire for a proper burial is real and legitimate. However, the cost of burial is bound to rise dramatically as land zoned for cemeteries becomes short.
Four of the city's seven cemeteries are all full and the other three are also almost full. The people who can now be buried in those cemeteries are those who have reserved plots, paying the appropriate charges.
We already see families plunge into debt for years to make sure their loved ones are properly buried; it would be wrong to see burdens increase. While cremation is the most obvious answer, the matter needs to be handled sensitively and with great care. Churches and traditional leaders need to think very seriously and carefully about how to help their followers accept the concept.
We are happy to hear Mayor Masunda saying that the council tabled the issue at its recent meeting and that consultations were underway with different stakeholders.
In neither Christianity nor traditional religion is there any theological barrier to cremation: the body is simply reduced to dust quicker in a furnace than in the ground.
Nor should cremation be considered impersonal: the funeral service is the same and little land would be needed to mark the last resting place of the ashes. In other African societies, a symbolic thing, be a stick or a log, has been buried in place of a corpse. Africans are great believers of symbolism. This also shows how far Africans can go even burying the soil, which is taken from the spot they believe their dead relative's body perished. So, it is not only the bones of the dead, which have been buried.
Now that there is a need for cremation, local cultures should adapt accordingly. Of course many burials will be transferred to rural homes for those who can afford the expense and sometimes for the sake of preservation of the so-called unchangeable practices.
In the long run, the escalating cost of transport will force many to have their dead cremated. A number may take the ashes home for decent burial and traditional rites.
It will take time for most people to willingly accept cremation, but we all owe a duty to our descendants and we cannot deprive them of farm and development land and deprive them of so much wealth simply because we want a permanent grave. We therefore challenge the custodians of our culture to find ways of how best we can minimize the inevitable damage to our culture.
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