A Kenton-on-Sea family who buried their mother two weeks ago has been left distraught and out of pocket after a Port Alfred funeral company rejected their claim on her burial policy. The children of 78-year-old Mfengukazi Ndinise, who passed away in early June, have issued a letter of demand to recover the R11 300 it cost them to have a new undertaker remove her body and conduct the burial.
Ndinise’s niece, Xoliswa Ngqishi, said her aunt had for years paid a monthly subscription of R250 for membership of a Kenton-based burial society. The membership, she said, entitled her aunt, as the main member, and several family members to the benefits of the policy, including having most of the funeral expenses covered.
Burial societies are informal community based groups formed on a similar principle to stokvels, where members pool their resources to support each other financially. They’re nonprofit organisations officially regulated by the decades-old Friendly Societies Act which has undergone several amendments since it was promulgated in 1956. Not all burial societies have a formal contract. With a funeral policy, on the other hand, you pay monthly premiums to a licensed insurer who, when you die, pays out a lump sum to the beneficiary you’ve registered with them. That predetermined amount is to help with funeral expenses.
Ngqishi explained the events leading to the family’s unexpected expenses.
“My aunt died on June 7 and we called Landu Funeral Services to take her. On June 11 we received her death certificate and the papers confirming a burial site in Kenton. Then Landu called the family and said they couldn’t cover the cost of burying our mother.”
This, Landu had explained, was because they hadn’t supplied her ID number before she died, in order for her to be registered on a new system being used by the undertakers.
In an earlier interview with Talk of the Town, Noluthando Landu, who handles the Landu Funeral Parlour’s administrative matters, explained the changeover of systems like this: “Members of that burial society were paying via [a certain person] in Kenton over a long period. [That person] always used to use Landu for burials.
“Then we noticed that there were problems: people from Kenton were coming to us and complaining that they weren’t receiving the money due to them when their family member died.”
That directly affected Landu, because families in turn weren’t able to pay them. So, in November and December, they had called two meetings for the burial society’s members.
“We explained to them that we would be taking over the burial society and that in future they would be paying directly to Landu,” Noluthando said. Landu, in turn, was underwritten by licensed insurer Structured Risk Solutions, which provided the administrative and legislative basis for collecting premiums and paying out on a formal funeral policy. Landu Funeral Services would be acting as an agent for the insurer through its Landu Burial Society. For R250 a month, up to 14 members per family could be thus covered.
“But in order for them to be covered, we told them, the main member had to supply their full identification number. Family members who are also on the policy can just supply their date of birth, but the main member must supply their ID,” Noluthando said.
Noluthando said despite repeated attempts to obtain Ndinise’s ID number, it hadn’t been forthcoming. In addition, she said, Ndinise’s last payment had been made in March. Two payments to bring her insurance status up to date had been made after her death. “The insurer won’t accept a claim when the premium has been paid after the person’s death,” she said.
Ngqishi and the rest of Ndinise’s family, however, believe that’s not a valid reason to withhold payment.
“When they took over the burial society, my aunt’s ID number must surely have been written down there,” Ngqishi said. “Where [are the old records]? Why couldn’t they just take it from there?”
Ngqishi denies that her family was informed about any information meetings ahead of the change from the Kenton-based burial society to Landu.
The shock for Ndinise’s family was when Landu quoted them just over R7 000 to bury her in Kenton.
“After my aunt had been paying the burial society for all those years? We couldn’t accept that!” Ngqishi said.
The family instead raised funds to get a different funeral parlour to remove Ndinise’s body and conduct the burial. In total, just the funeral parlour expenses had come to R11 300.
“We’re not happy at all,” Ngqishi said. “We didn’t expect something like this when my aunt paid her subscription every month for so many years. They must pay back the money.”
Talk of the Town couldn’t confirm the name of the burial society that Ndinise belonged to, nor establish how it worked, because the person Ngqishi said her aunt had been paying her monthly subscription to denied any knowledge of it. A person was named by both Ngqishi and Landu Funeral Parlour as the person in charge of the former Kenton-on-Sea based burial society. But when TOTT called her to confirm the burial society’s name and clarify her role, she said, “That was not my burial society. No, nothing, sorry. Please, goodbye.”
Talk of the Town will report further on this.
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This article was first published in Talk of the Town, July 3, 2025. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
