The Bloemfontein investment includes a Crematory Monument housing 48 000 niches in various walls of remembrance – rather than utilising the traditional “graveyard concept”. The company is now planning a similar development in Durban and Cape Town, each to house 55 000 niches.

It takes 38 hectares to accommodate 55 000 graves, meaning that with these three developments alone, Avalon has effectively saved South Africa more than 100 hectares of land, at a  time when there is literally no land left for urban graveyards – an issue the South African government is taking very seriously.

The Avalon Memoriam concept is by far the most innovative and comprehensive alternative to emerge in SA.  It is based on the practice of cremation. But the concept, said Avalon CEO Daniel Schubert, “goes far beyond that. “The entire concept revolves around land resource management, environmental control, community upliftment, beautification of the country, the creation of monuments honouring our ancestors and, above all, the restoration of a sense of dignity to an area of life which lost its dignity some time ago.”

There is a critical shortage of available ground for new cemeteries in SA’s ever-expanding urban areas. This is exacerbated by grave robbers, vandals, occult-inspired bandits and violent criminals preying on soft targets. The crisis is further worsened by the undeniable impact that AIDS is having on our population. AIDS reduces life expectancy by more than 20 years and, in sub-Saharan Africa alone, nearly 12 million children are orphaned by the disease.

According to Schubert, the government is embarking on some rather radical initiatives in an attempt to alleviate the shortage of burial space. “We are already seeing government drives towards burying bodies on top of each other, as well as the recent exhumation of over 5000 graves in eThekweni – but even this is not going to solve the problem.”

With the growing mortality rate there are currently about 1 million deaths per year, said Schubert. “With a projected annual grave availability rate of less than 500 000 graves – and reducing fast – large volumes of ground burials will soon become an impossibility”.

“While it sounds a tad crude, ground burial is one of most exorbitant under-utilisations of land imaginable”.

In a recent report to the eThekweni Metro Council, Mr Thembinkosi Ngcobo, president of the National Institute of Environment and Recreation Management, said: “South Africa’s big cities are running out of space for cemeteries and tough decisions will have to be made soon on whether municipalities can continue to provide public burial grounds ‘as we know them today’”.