Paper short abstract:

The main objective is to explore how COVID-19 regulations affected cultural expressions of death and grief. On 2 April 2020 Botswana imposed a first lockdown. Covid-19 restrictions negatively impacted cultural-expression of grief

Paper long abstract:

The main objective of this paper is to explore how COVID-19 regulations affected the traditional/cultural expressions of death and funeral rites. On March 11 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic, this led to the placing of stringent measures on funereal rites to protect people against the pandemic. Botswana confirmed a first case of Covid-19 on 30 March, immediately the government declared a state of emergency and subsequently imposed an initial 28-day lockdown on 2 April 2020. Covid-19 management strategies included managing funerals. Funeral rites are important ways through which societies deal with grief effectively. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with five bereaved families, literature on Covid 19 and death (11 articles), newspapers and a series of Botswana Government Gazette Extraordinary and Public Notices Covid 19 Press Release. Admittedly all COVID-19 protocols were meant to effectively contain the spread of the disease; however cultural ways of dealing with death were negatively affected. The major findings are that the social distancing, cancellation of night vigil and body viewing; limiting of attendees at funeral to only 50 people; the introduction of zonal travel permits and the use of tractors to dig and cover negatively impacted on funereal rituals and cultural ways of effectively dealing with death. Therefore Covid-19 restrictions led to improper burials rites that affected on people’s social relations, their spiritual and mental well-being. One of the major recommendations is that the cooking of food at funeral is an unnecessarily cost that Batswana need to consider post Covid-19.