Why a hearse has to be slow

The casket area of the eight-wheeled stretched hearse owned by
 Khayelihle Funeral Services in Pietermaritzburg is tastefully
decorated with a back-lit replica of Leonardo de Vinci’s
famous painting The Last Supper.

PHOTO: Jonathan  Burton

THE eight-wheeled, stretched hearse in Pietermaritzburg is one of 49 vehicles owned by Khayelihle Funeral Services, but it is the most popular vehicle among the bereaved.

So popular, in fact, that one of the hearse drivers, Senzo Ndlovu (35), tells of a funeral where he suspected the ghost of one dearly departed “had done something” to stop their cheaper but always reliable Toyota hearse in its tracks. “Nothing we did could get that [Toyota] hearse to start again, so we moved the casket to the eight-wheeler and the Toyota suddenly started,” he recalls.

Custom City in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, converts 126 Series Mercedes into eight-seater, eight-wheel hearses. The stretched limo rides on three rear axles, only one of which is driven. Inside, the casket area is tastefully decorated with a replica of Leonardo de Vinci’s famous painting The Last Supper.

When the family are very bereaved, Ndlovu said he and fellow driver Mwe Mazibuko (32) sing hymns to calm their passengers. They drive the hearse like a bus, for despite a 4,2-litre V8, response times through the automatic clutch are glacial. Turning the limo requires at least three open lanes, which is why drivers need a C1 licence (for vehicles under 16 tons).

An urban legend that periodically does the rounds at mortuaries may explain why such ponderous slowness is precisely right for transporting the dead.

The legend goes that it was a cold and wintry night when two undertakers were passing through the Free State en route to Cape Town to deliver the dearly departed in the back of their old Valiant station wagon.

One driver was asleep when his partner stopped to fill up outside Bloemfontein. There, a hitch-hiker begged for a lift and so desperate was the hiker that he did not mind squeezing into the back, next to the casket, where he promptly fell asleep.

Somewhere after Colesberg, the drivers switched.

The new driver heard the odd noise coming from behind the purple curtains that separated the living from the dead, but he thought it was just gas.

For it is a sad fact of life that long after death, the dearly departed still pass wind.

Fast-forward a few hours, to where we find the first driver snoring and our new driver struggling to stay awake as he drove through the spooky Karoo. Then a new sound made his skin grow cold. In the back, the dearly departed had also started to snore!

The snoring stopped abruptly and a hand opened the curtains as a hollow voice asked, “where are we now?”. By the time the Valiant came to a stop, the driver had ran far into the night. Were it not for the old Valiant’s low centre of gravity, it would have ended on its roof.

Watch the drivers re-enact this urban legend to see why they also prefer a slow-handling hearse.
WATCH THE LEGEND'S RE-ENACTMENT HERE.