Where Home Is a Cemetery

Pigs, Children and Tombstones: Coedmore’s Struggle for Dignity

By CHRIS MAKHAYE

Noyise Ncedo, her dauughter and granddaughter.

Children zigzag between tombstones like it’s an obstacle course, their laughter competing with pigs that root through rubbish like unpaid municipal workers. Gravestones double as benches, laundry stations, and sometimes even tables for a cold drink.

Welcome to Coedmore — an informal settlement built inside an old Hindu cemetery, where life goes on quite literally over the dead.

Just 12 kilometres south of Durban’s city centre, tucked behind the NPC cement factory, this is a place you don’t stumble upon — you navigate to it: past an overgrown soccer field, under a railway bridge, and through enough rubbish to make you question your life choices.

At the edge of it all, a neat row of newly installed toilets stands like a polite apology. Nearby, shipping containers sit stubbornly, blocking space — and, as residents will tell you, common sense.

A pig making its way past a pile of rubbish

Children and Tragedy

Children here grow up fast — and not just because they play tag on tombstones. Some head to school each morning, satchels on their backs, stepping over graves like it’s part of the uniform. But danger lurks beyond the cemetery.

Two years ago, three children were killed in a horrific accident involving a truck — a reminder that for parents here, survival comes with daily dread.

Sanelisiwe Cuphe (26), from the Eastern Cape, says the fear of graves didn’t last long. “Back home, we feared cemeteries. Here? Yoh… people do everything on tombstones — washing, sitting, even drinking,” she says, laughing. Then she adds, almost conspiratorially: “I don’t tell people at home I live here. They’ll think I’ve joined the ancestors early.”

Bonga Ngcobo and his nephew Nkosinathi. They live in this in-cemetery informal settlement to be closer to places where they get piece jobs.

Ngcobo’s Missed House

Bonga Ngcobo has been living in Coedmore since 2000 — long enough to know that missing an RDP house is a lifetime sentence. While visiting family in the Eastern Cape in the early 2000s, his neighbours were allocated homes in Dumisani Makhaye Village. His? Gone.

Now he shares a shack with his nephew, hustling for piece jobs that are as scarce as privacy in a cemetery. “I lost my house by a whisker,” he says. “Now we fight for jobs — and even those are few.”

Generations in the Cemetery

In Coedmore, some families don’t just visit graves — they grow up around them. Noyise Ncedo arrived in 2001 with a toddler. Today, that child is a mother herself, raising another generation among tombstones.

“Government promised to move us,” Noyise says. “Even a transit camp would be an upgrade from sharing space with the departed.”

Her daughter Sanelisiwe is still job hunting in nearby factories. “Most of the time, you don’t even get a chance,” she says. “But we keep trying.”

Shack Farming and Exploitation

Where there is desperation, there is business. Residents speak of “shack farmers” — landlords of last resort — who build makeshift rooms and rent them out to anyone who can pay. “It’s business,” one resident shrugs. “Even suffering has a price here.”

Floods Bring Devastation

When it rains in Coedmore, it doesn’t pour — it arrives with luggage. Residents say shipping containers installed nearby have blocked natural drainage, turning the settlement into a waterpark nobody asked for. “The water has nowhere to go,” says one man. “So it comes to us. Inside the house.”

Selling Survival

For some, getting an RDP house wasn’t the end of the struggle — it was just a different problem. A man from Bizana says he had to sell his government house because it was too far from work. “What must I choose — a house or a way to eat?” he asks. “I chose survival.”

Foreign Nationals

Coedmore doesn’t ask where you’re from — only whether you can survive. Some foreign nationals have also settled here, drawn by its proximity to jobs in nearby suburbs and factories.

One domestic worker says the cemetery, for all its oddities, is practical. “From here, I can walk to work,” she says. “It’s not perfect… but it works.”

Tim Goslett is an IT man who has fallen on hard times.

Margins of Society

Coedmore is a reminder that hardship has no single face. Tim Gosslett (37), an IT technician, now survives by collecting scrap metal. “Life humbled me,” he says. “Now I hustle like everyone else here.”

He speaks openly about his struggles, including addiction, and the stigma he faces. “Out there, they call us names. Here, at least, we understand each other. Many people, including whites like me, look down upon us, calling us hobos or Paras (parasites). They chase us away when we approach for food or piece, saying we are coming to steal.”

Graves live side by side with people.

Politics and Promises

Election season brings familiar visitors — politicians with big promises and short memories. “Before voting, they are here,” says a community leader. “After voting, they vanish like ghosts. Maybe they dont feel at home in a cemetery.”

Residents say they’ve heard it all before: housing plans, relocation talks, service delivery pledges. So far, nothing has risen from the grave.

Goods containers are blocking waterways.

Closing

For activists, Coedmore is more than a settlement — it’s a symbol. A place where policy failures are written in dirt paths and lived daily between tombstones.

Here, pigs rummage, children play, and generations grow up where others were meant to rest. In Coedmore, life goes on — stubborn, resilient, and just a little bit grave.

Thapelo Mohapi, spokesman for shack dwellers movement Abahlali Basemjondolo, said their team had visited the settlement many times. "Government has promised to move people to a better place but this has not materialised. Another problem is that many residents want to move but some said they prefer staying behind. Its a paradox," he said,