Joburg City Parks accused of neglecting some Alexandra cemeteries

Residents of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg, have accused Johannesburg City Parks of neglecting local cemeteries and allowing them to deteriorate.

This comes after hundreds of residents from the Setswetla informal settlement erected shacks on and around the cemetery grounds.

One of the affected residents, Linda Twala, says the cemetery is not vacant land but a sacred space which should be treated with dignity and respect.

“They stole some of our tombstones.

They took my father’s tombstone, and I had to erect a new one.

All those that died in 1976, they are just nearby here.

Their graves have been vandalized, you can’t see them now, it’s just a shack on top of another, we don’t know what to do because, it’s heartbreaking.”