How many families can afford to send somebody on a return trip of two thousand kilometres to witness a funeral at short notice? How many families have passports and visas to travel to a funeral? What is happening to Zimbabwe’s dead in the diaspora? In any culture in the world, attending the funeral of a loved one is an essential part of dealing with mourning and closure. It is the deep concern of the authors that there are families in Zimbabwe right now who may not even know that their husband/son/daughter/mother/father is already dead and buried in South Africa, or that their human remains are lying on the bottom of the Limpopo or in the open bush. How long does a family wait to hear from somebody who is in fact dead, before starting to wonder why they are so silent? How does a son/daughter/wife sitting in Zimbabwe begin to try to find out the fate of a person who has become silent in a foreign land? Zimbabweans are not just dying – they are becoming “disappeared persons”, without death certificates, without known places of burial. They are becoming aggrieved spirits who were not buried honourably, and who are now lost and wandering in a foreign place. Apart from the problems of lack of closure for families, there may be practical problems linked to these foreign deaths in the years ahead, particularly linked to the lack of death certificates. Without death certificates, widows and widowers cannot remarry. Without death certificates, heirs will have problems inheriting whatever little property there may be, or getting birth certificates for children.176 Orphans in a foreign land A further problem drawn to the attention of the authors is that of Zimbabwean children who may find themselves stranded in South Africa when their sole parent dies there. One woman who is a Zimbabwean with a permanent residence permit in South Africa, told us that she has informally adopted a two year old Zimbabwean child, whose mother died in South Africa in 2003.177 This child was originally looked after by the day care centre that she was attending when her mother died, but this was not a permanent solution. This child has no documentation and no contact address for relatives in Zimbabwe. She is a stateless child. She is somebody’s grandchild or cousin, but has now fallen out of her Zimbabwean family system altogether. She is fortunate in that she has a good home: other Zimbabwean orphans in South Africa may not all be as fortunate. Help for the dying and the dead There would appear to be a need to help not only the living exiles, but also the dying and the dead. More research needs to be done into all the implications of Zimbabweans dying anonymous deaths abroad. In Zimbabwe, many people now belong to burial societies and pay a monthly premium towards funeral expenses. However, there are many reasons why this system would not work smoothly in the cross-border situation, including issues pointed to before. These include the fact people are very mobile, often use false names, and are vulnerable to 176 In many instances, men leave pregnant wives behind, and the issuing of birth certificates in Zimbabwe requires the father’s signature. In Zimbabwe, especially in rural areas, people frequently do not apply for birth certificates until their child is of school going age, at 5 years old, so a dead father without a death certificate creates a real problem in such cases. 177 Interview, October 2003. 79