Two killed in jihadist attack in northern Mozambique - AFP
Cross-border confusion: After 3 months in Moz jail, SA undertaker to stand trial / EWN
7:37 CAT | 24 May 2021
in file CoM
- Undertaker Patrick Lunguza from Cape Town has been languishing in a Mozambican jail for three months on charges that have left his family and colleagues baffled.
A Cape Town woman is beside herself with worry as her husband languishes in a Mozambican jail.
Undertaker Patrick Lunguza was arrested in Mozambique three months ago while he was transporting five bodies from Cape Town to Malawi.
He was travelling with some of the deceased’s relatives and was stopped by police in Mozambique.
Lunguza had all the relevant documentation required, but some of the family members did not and on that basis, he was arrested and charged.
With her hands clenched in her lap at her Hill View home in Cape Town, Margaret Zwedala told Eyewitness News that the uncertainty of her husband’s situation and the thought of him far from home in a foreign jail cell kept her awake at night.
“It is a nightmare. I have been crying ever since he was arrested. What is helping me and bringing me up is the church.”
Lunguza has been an undertaker for 25 years and the professional association to which he belongs has been trying to intervene on his behalf.
But Kenny McDillon of the Undertakers United Front in the Western Cape said it had been very difficult.
Confusing charge
“Basically for the whole month of March we did not receive any charge sheet. Later we found that they had charged him for illegally transporting immigrants through Mozambique. The illegal immigrants were the family members of the deceased. It was their passports and paperwork that were not in order at the time,” said McDillon.
Lunguza is an experienced undertaker who’s owned and operated his own business for many years and one of the services he offers is the repatriation of bodies of African foreign nationals who’ve died in South Africa.
“It is part of his business and not the first time. What he does is he takes more than one body for other undertakers as well, but knowing him, he will always make sure that the paperwork for that particular body is in order,” said McDillon. “We do know him as a person of character that will make sure that the paperwork is correct.”
“They released the so-called illegal immigrants to their country in Malawi, but they detained the South African who was the driver of the vehicle at the time.”
The fact that the other travelers and the bodies were released is also puzzling to Chris Stali, convener of the Undertakers United Front in the Western Cape.
“They only kept him. He had a passport to go to Malawi. Even if those people had no papers, Mr Lunguza has no right to check the papers. Only Home Affairs has got the right to check if the papers are wrong or right. So, if the people are saying to him they have all the papers, he has to take their word.”
Disbelief and shock
Zwedala said she initially didn’t believe him when her husband phoned her to tell her he’d been arrested.
“I was shocked. That first week I did not think he was serious because he would phone and I did not believe he was arrested. And he has a passport valid until 2028.
“When he took a photo of himself in the cell that he is in, then I believed him towards the end of that week, before they took his phone away.”
McDillon said even basic communication with Lunguza had been difficult.
“There is a prison warder who allows him to use his phone. He would write a letter and then WhatsApp the picture of the letter to us.”
Stali said they had reached out to everyone they could think of in order to help their colleague, including the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco).
“We went as far as to try to reach the minister, the head of department. We sent emails to them. There is no response,” said Stali.
McDillon said that initially Dirco advised them that it couldn’t get involved until Lunguza was charged. “When he was charged, Dirco has gone quiet.”
Dirco said it was aware of the matter and spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele said the department, through its mission, was providing all the necessary consular support to the family.
But Stali said that support had been difficult for the family to access on a practical level.
“Communication has been a major problem on that side, even our offices of the embassy are not coming up front and helping us. On two occasions when he had to appear, the case was turned back because there was no person who could translate English fluently into Portuguese.”
Lunguza’s lawyer in Mozambique, Alfredo Faife, has indicated that his client was expected back in court on 26 May for trial.
Source: EWN
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