South Africa’s funeral industry, estimated to be worth billions of rands annually, is increasingly being targeted by mafia-style criminal groups.
Speaking in an interview with The Money Show, South African Funeral Practitioners Association (SAFPA) president Nomfundo Mcoyi-Zondo said the scale of the problem has grown significantly over the years.
She noted that South Africa has more than 20,000 funeral parlours currently operating across the country.
However, not all are legal, and there is mounting concern about organised criminal activity in South Africa’s funeral industry.
This includes fraudulent funeral policies, intimidation, illegal body removals, and unregistered operators targeting vulnerable communities.
This has become a lucrative business for criminals, considering the sector has become a major economic force in South Africa.
Funeral cover is among the country’s most widely held insurance products, and the broader funeral economy is estimated to exceed R10 billion annually.
However, Mcoyi-Zondo stressed that many operators labelled “illegal” should rather be referred to as “unauthorised funeral operators”.
Mcoyi-Zondo explained that many smaller operators are operating without the full set of regulatory documents required to operate legally, often due to bureaucratic hurdles and compliance challenges.
“It’s just that they don’t have certain documents to operate. Maybe they are still struggling due to regulations, due to a lot of reasons,” she said.
Mcoyi-Zondo acknowledged that there is a distinction between operators who simply lack paperwork and those who may pose risks to the public.
“There’s something that can be illegal, in other words, they haven’t complied with regulations,” she said.
However, some are not welcome, and they can also be unsafe. In other words, they don’t have the refrigeration facilities, and use intimidation, and bury people in unauthorised areas.
To tackle these problems, SAFPA and other industry bodies are trying to professionalise the sector through training, mentoring, and collaboration with government departments.
“We have created associations like the one I come from, so that we come together and make sure that we regulate, we mentor, we guide, we train,” Mcoyi-Zondo said.
New innovations are coming for the industry
She added that the industry is working closely with departments including Home Affairs, SARS, and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) to improve compliance and reduce opportunities for abuse.
Mcoyi-Zondo also argued that regulators need to engage directly with funeral practitioners to reduce unnecessary red tape while still protecting consumers.
Beyond criminality and compliance concerns, the funeral industry is also grappling with broader structural challenges, including land shortages for burials and changing consumer expectations.
Mcoyi-Zondo said the sector is increasingly exploring alternative burial methods, including cremation and aquamation, which uses water instead of traditional burial or flame cremation.
According to Mcoyi-Zondo, only one company in South Africa currently offers aquamation services, and the industry is pushing the government to support wider adoption of greener burial technologies.
“We need to make sure that we talk to the government to avail finances and funding for getting more aquamation machines so that our people can be buried in a different way that is more green as well,” she said.
The industry is also seeing rapid technological and cultural changes, including virtual funerals and digital systems introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We saw a lot of funerals done virtually, where people could not attend, and people are loving that,” Mcoyi-Zondo said.
“There’s a lot of innovation that we will be talking to and introducing people to, and a lot of compliance that we will be talking to as well, and a lot of training as well, because we need to professionalise the industry.”
