JOHANNESBURG CITY PARKS CEMETERIES & CREMATORIA Foreword by Prema Naidoo It gives me great pleasure to introduce the Johannesburg City Parks 2008 Cemeteries brochure to the residents of Prema Naidoo the City of Johannesburg. Member Mayoral Committee: Environment City of Johannesburg Cemeteries play an important role in the history and making of Johannesburg, and are critical green lungs for our growing city. We look forward to the new cemeteries coming on line at Johannesburg, with Diepsloot and Waterval, and other locations in the near future. Flora Mokgohloa Executive Director: Environmental Management I have memories myself of the cremation of my own family City of Johannesburg members. My grandfather, well-known activist Thami Naidoo, was cremated at the Hindu Crematorium. I know that many others share memories of people now lying in our cemeteries. It is important to us at City Parks that the cemeteries are Luther Williams more than repositories of the dead, but become memorial Managing Director: Johannesburg City Parks gardens for the living. It is our vision that people will visit the cemeteries as places to find peace and tranquility, and be inspired and refreshed by the cemeteries of today. Though the issue of mortality is one faced by all humans, we endeavour to make our lives worthwhile. It is how we wish to be remembered once we are gone. A lasting resting place is a testament to a life well lived. 1 Johannesburg City Parks Cemeteries and Crematoria Introduction About Cemeteries Johannesburg City Parks and Cemeteries History of Cemeteries and Crematoria Mortality Rates and Burial Trends Burial Options Booking Procedures Finding Burial Sites Pauper and Indigent Graves Dealing with Death Heroes Acre and High-Profile Areas In Search of Enoch Sontonga Johannesburg’s Farm Cemeteries Map of Cemetery Locations Key Johannesburg Cemeteries Braamfontein Brixton Avalon West Park Newclare New Roodeport Lenasia Waterval Diepsloot Johannesburg Memorial Sites 2 Johannesburg City Parks and Cemeteries A dedication to parks and cemeteries has been the outlying townships are now receiving trees, part of Johannesburg’s history since 1888, and roads and attention, with heroes’ acres and high- Johannesburg City Parks continues this legacy. profile areas. Responsibilities are much broader than when the city first started; today Johannesburg City Parks Today, City Parks regards cemeteries as areas looks after 2138 parks, street verges, nature of remembrance to honour the deceased. reserves, and developed and undeveloped green Cemeteries provide opportunities to create green belts, as well as 35 cemeteries and three footprints within urban belts. This approach to crematoria. Looking after cemeteries and cemetery design creates spaces where people crematoria requires being part historian, part can remember their dead in the comfort of natural archival records-keeper, in addition to being a settings. This can be seen in the design and developer of cemetery grounds, designer and landscaping of Diepsloot and Waterval in Midrand. landscaper, and maintainer of grounds and graves. These locations are ‘cemeteries for the living’, To preserve the place of public burials is to help designed with sensitivity to the environment, using remember the passing of those who rest there. indigenous plants and materials with a more park- like Afrocentric theme. Existing cemeteries The conservation, upkeep and maintenance of continue to be upgraded with the planting of trees, cemeteries and crematoria the grading of roads, and is a dedicated business at ground maintenance. Johannesburg City Parks. It can take years to receive Out of 35 cemeteries in approval for grounds 2007, 26 are ‘passive’, for new cemeteries. meaning that there is no Understanding mortality new burial space other than rates and burial trends many second and third burials, years in advance is crucial, and the other remaining as is proper planning. cemeteries are quickly filling Environmental assessment up. A variety of other burial and impact studies are part options, such as cremation, of this process. Local memorial walls, gardens of communities are also remembrance, second and consulted, as burials and third burials, and reduction cremations require a burial graves are now being sensitive approach and offered to assist the understanding of cultures community and protect and customs. valuable space. Johannesburg City Parks’ The legacy, for approach to the Johannesburg City Parks, development of cemeteries continues to honour those has evolved over the years. who have passed before us, One evolution is to by creating green, treed address the inequalities of havens within the City, apartheid. While cemeteries where the living can in the main city are preserve their memories into beautifully treed, those in the future. War Memorial Cenotaph, Braamfontein Cemetery 3 Johannesburg: A city’s history told in cemeteries Johannesburg Market Square circa 1890 To walk the cemeteries of Johannesburg is to other cemeteries came into being under the control explore the city’s own history. The pioneering of churches, hospitals and mines. For those who farmers, the city’s founders, the heroes, the fallen, were non-conformist, it was a struggle to find a the striking miners, the Boer concentration camp place to be buried, and the town took over the victims, Christians, Hindu, Muslims, Jews, and handling of their burial sites. others, all equal in the earth. With every beginning, there is a resting place for those who have lived The Anglo-Boer War fully occupied the country through history, great and small. from 1899 to 1902, and during that time many thousands of Boers died in concentration camps, It began on a wide savannah grassland one including one placed in Turffontein Racecourse. Sunday morning in 1886, when a stonemason Today many of them are buried in Suideroord, in named George Harrison stumbled over an outcrop seven coffin-shaped grave areas. of lichen-covered rock. Being an old-time prospector, he crushed a sample, panned It wasn’t until 1907, at a Town Council it, and knew what he found was gold. His meeting, that cemeteries came to rest discovery that day became Main Reef. under the city’s auspices. The Parks and Overnight the grassland became a tent Estates Committee reported, ‘The town for miners, later a town, and then Parks Department has, since its a city. Just as it was born, inception in 1904, been a sub- Johannesburg is a place of many department of the Town Engineer’s beginnings, of eloquent rises and Department. We are of the opinion, dramatic history, carrying the stories that, owing to the increase in the of many in its graveyards and volume of work in connection with cemeteries. the Parks (which included cemeteries), the time has now The first burial grounds in arrived for the formation of a Johannesburg were farm cemeteries separate Department of Parks. We for farmers and their workers. have issued instructions accordingly.’ Several are still in existence today. As the town leapt into existence with According to the Parks Department the discovery of gold, it quickly records, the expenditure on parks required new burial facilities. Out of during that period amounted to immediate need, the first cemetery was Braamfontein Cemetery, £3,222.47. There was one cemetery developed between Bree, Diagonal and circa 1906 under the control of the Town Engineer, Harrison Streets. This cemetery had a and the average number of burials was short life, as the town quickly outgrew its 50 per week – 22 white and 28 coloured. boundaries. The remains of those buried in the Even then, the colour distinction was present. original town cemetery were later exhumed and reinterred in 1897. Johannesburg continued to grow at a burgeoning rate, and with growth came more deaths. By 1905 By 1888 the first regional cemetery, Braamfontein, it was estimated that Braamfontein Cemetery situated near the central city, had been established. would be fully occupied within 20 months. Three As Johannesburg was still developing in the 1880s, years later, a new cemetery was established on 4 South African War Concentration Camp at the Johannesburg (Turffontein) Race Course an 84-acre portion of land at Brixton. That year 1918 in the north-western corner of Brixton. By there were 3410 burials. By that time, the town 1956, a new crematorium had been built adjacent had 20 parks, varying in size from less than one to the old crematorium. The old crematorium is acre to 289 acres, as well as two cemeteries. now a national monument. On 1 October 1910, the first grave was made in the ‘New Cemetery’, Brixton, with Braamfontein The development of cemeteries echoed nearly full. No one could imagine that Johannesburg’s own apartheid history. Cemeteries Johannesburg would continue to grow at the pace came to be developed along racial lines, with that it has, continuing to be a challenge for town Asian and coloured cemeteries in Newclare, planners even today. Brixton and Lenasia, and so-called native cemeteries in Alexandra and Soweto. At that time, mourners requested locations for different religions, and a Jewish section was At Newclare, 108 acres of ground was acquired established, which lies adjacent to the Muslim for what was known as the ‘Asiatic, Euro-African section. Just outside these sections were places and Native’ cemetery. The crematorium in for Chinese, blacks, military, firemen, policemen Braamfontein was opened in 1932 at a cost of and many more religious divisions. Cemeteries £9,000. The demand for cremations was greater were laid out in European fashion, with long rows than could be met by a single furnace and it was of graves alongside straight roads, divided into proposed to provide for an additional furnace. even sections. The graves of soldiers who were buried in Braamfontein during the Anglo-Boer War The Council purchased ground on Farm Waterval period were laid out in lawn and ribbon flower and Braamfontein for a new cemetery, which in beds, on the same pattern as the war cemeteries 1942 became West Park.