Heritage Cases

This burial ground contains 85 graves located on Portion 7 of the farm Blesbokfontein 38 IS, near Ogies, Mpumalanga Province. Of the 85 graves, fifty have associated next of kin who have requested that we relocate their graves. The graves will be relocated to the cemeteries as requested by the families. The thirty-four unclaimed graves will be relocated to the closest municipal cemetery. Mosiac Funeral Group will be responsible for the handling and reburial of the exhumed human remains. Of the 85 graves 5 are known to be older than 60 years, 13 the family do not know the age of and 34 have been unclaimed and therefore assumed to be older than 60 years old as stipulated in the Heritage Act. The cemetery itself is not directly impacted upon by the expansion of coal mining by the TOC Project however, underground mining activities have slightly destabilized the ground around the graves. Although not required, Glencore has offered to relocate the graves even though they are not directly affected by mining activities. We have conducted a process of stakeholder engagement to identify the buried individuals and to obtain permission for exhumation and re-interment from the affected families, communities and other bona fide interested and affected parties. This process commenced on Wednesday, 7 December 2017 with the erection of bilingual (English and isiZulu) site notices at the burial ground. Bilingual (isiZulu and English) newspaper notices were published in the Daily Sun and Witbank News on Tuesday, 16 January 2018 and Wednesday, 19 January 2018 respectively. After conducting the stakeholder meetings, the next-of-kin of the following three graves (BFN 11, 15 & 16) are not willing to relocate their graves.