The digital desecration: how social media is corrupting our sacred funeral rituals

IOL News

2 days ago

MHLABUNZIMA MEMELA
IT was a bright, beautiful Sunday, the kind of day when the sky stretches endlessly, and the world feels innocent again. I was immersed in the Clover Cup Final. I had scored four goals in three games, including the decider. Victory roared around me. Sweat, cheers and glory. That type of joy only sport can bring; primal, pure and real.
My Ericsson T10, a gift from my brother Siphiwe, rang endlessly in my bag. I didn't hear it. I was unreachable. Unaware. When Siphiwe finally found me, there was no celebration in his eyes. Just something quiet. Heavy.
"They have been looking for you at home. Please call them." He did not say what I now know he wanted to, that the man I had left on Saturday, my father, my giant, had taken his final breath. I had made a promise to see him the next weekend. But that promise died before I could keep it.
While I was scoring goals, life was busy rewriting the script, from celebration to loss, from cheers to silence. That memory crashed into me again this week, like lightning through the spine, when I watched the funeral of Bishop Simon Moyeni Dingane 'S.D' Gumbi.
A man of God. A pillar. A father to many. His farewell should have been soaked in reverence. Instead, it was drenched in spectacle. The church was full, not of mourners, but of lenses. Phones held higher than heads. People did not come to cry; they came to capture. They came dressed not in mourning, but in trend. Black became a fashion statement, not a symbol of sorrow.
Grief became an aesthetic. Selfies with the casket. TikTok dances in church courtyards. Captions rehearsed like eulogies. 'Here to pay my last respects,' followed by a fire emoji and a pose.
I was there. I was a witness to this tragedy within a tragedy. And I asked myself, have we fallen so far? Are we so thirsty for visibility that even death must perform for the algorithm?
We used to feel grief. Now we filter it. The funeral, once a sacred space of spiritual alignment and communal healing, is now a photoshoot opportunity. The grieving mother becomes a background extra. The widow, merely a blur. The coffin, a prop. The sermon is a soundtrack for a trending reel.
We have turned sacred rituals into social media content. Where once we whispered to our ancestors, now we livestream impepho (an African herb significant for its healing and spiritual properties) with ring lights and hashtags. The unveiling ceremony is now a curated experience. A 'spiritual moment' for followers and fake friends.
The dead are not celebrated or honoured; they are marketed. And maybe I am too old-school. Maybe I belong to an era when grief lived in the bones, not in the likes. When funerals were heavy, not glamorous. When you wore black because your soul was darkened by loss, not because Gucci had a winter line.
We once understood silence as sacred. Today, silence is considered irrelevant. We have become a nation of mourners who do not truly mourn, who show up but do not feel the loss. We document every ritual but embody none.
We have traded reverence for relevance. We have become so obsessed with being seen that we no longer see, not the pain, not the moment, not even each other.
This is not evolution. It is erosion. Our grandparents mourned with dignity. They walked barefoot to the grave, not for content, but for connection. They knew that when you cry, you cry with your whole being, not with one eye on the camera. They did not need Wi-Fi to feel their loss. They had memories.
It was heartbreaking and deeply disrespectful to see even those we trust, priests and fellow Christians, turning the funeral into a photo opportunity. The passing of Bishop S.D. Gumbi should have been a moment of solemn reflection and honour, not a chance to post pictures and claim, 'We buried him,' as if it's about them.
Where is our humility, our reverence for the sacred? We must restore dignity to how we mourn, especially as the church. We must return. Return to sacredness. Return to stillness. Return to humility. Let us teach our children that not everything must be documented and that not all grief needs a reel.
That some moments are meant to be felt, not filmed. Let's remember that presence means more than showing up; it means being there in heart, in spirit, and in silence.
Because if we do not, we will raise a generation that poses next to graves while their souls drift into nothingness. A generation that buries its elders but forgets their teachings. A generation that mistakes performance for purpose.
The send-off of Bishop S.D. Gumbi reminded me we are a people unravelling, not just mourning poorly but forgetting how to mourn at all. We are a lost nation. And we are losing ourselves, one selfie at a time.
(Memela is a former journalist who worked for various newspapers. He is also a former provincial government communications specialist. He writes in his personal capacity. His views don't necessarily reflect those of the Sunday Tribune or IOL)