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One by one, five by tomb, the coffins are buried in the red earth of this poorly guarded corner of a cemetery. The claw on cheap wood attests to their anonymity: "Unknown B / Male".
These men were migrants from other African countries and had done almost nothing to earn a living in Gauteng's booming underground economy, a name roughly translated as "golden land". Instead of fortune, many have died, their unnamed and unclaimed bodies – more than 4,300 in Gauteng between 2014 and 2017 alone.
READ: 56,800 dead and missing – the hidden record of migration
Some of their lives ended here, in the Olifantsvlei cemetery, in silence, among tufts of grass growing on tiny placards indicating: Pauper Block. There are coffins so tiny that they could only belong to children.
While people around the world are fleeing war, hunger and lack of jobs, global migration has reached record levels, with more than 258 million international migrants in 2017. People who simply die or disappear during of their trip, never to be seen again
PICS: In spite of the risks, the migration fixes a lot in Ivory Coast
A growing number of migrants have drowned, died in the desert or have fallen prey to traffickers, leaving their families wondering what happened to them. At the same time, anonymous bodies fill cemeteries all over the world, such as that of Olifantsvlei.
18,400 dead or missing
Despite rumors of "waves" of African migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean, many people emigrate to Africa – 16 million – leaving for Europe.
In total, since 2014, at least 18,400 people have died or disappeared while traveling in Africa, according to an Associated Press report. The count is based on IOM records, missing person reports and thousands of interviews with migrants conducted by the Center for Gender-based Migration based in Geneva.
The tens of thousands of people who simply die or disappear during their journey, will never be seen again. (Nariman El-Mofty, AP)
This includes more than 8,700 people whose traveling companions reported their disappearance as they left the Horn of Africa.
When people disappear during their migration to Africa, they often remain without trace.
Some disappear or disappear in a vast network of formal and informal prisons in Libya. And IOM said the Sahara desert could have killed more migrants than the Mediterranean. But no one will ever know for sure in a region where borders are little more than lines drawn on maps, and no government is seeking an extent as vast as the continental United States.
The hard sun and swirling desert sands decompose rapidly and bury the bodies of the migrants, so that even when they present themselves, they are usually impossible to identify.
At least five bodies of unidentified people are buried on each other in each grave. (Bram Janssen, AP)
With a prosperous economy and a stable government, South Africa attracts more migrants than any other country in Africa. The government is a meticulous collector of fingerprints – almost all legal residents and citizens have a record somewhere – so the bodies without any documents are supposed to live and work illegally in the country. Fingerprints of corpses are possible, but there is no regular collection of DNA.
Lack of resources prevents the identification of migrants
The rate of violent crime in South Africa is one of the highest in the world and the police focus more on the settlement of national cases than on the identification of migrants.
"It makes sense, as sad as it may be … You want to find the killer if you're a policeman, because he could kill more people," said Jeanine Vellema, chief specialist of the province's eight morgues. Migrant identification, for its part, is largely a problem for foreign families – and the poor, for that matter.
The body of an unidentified man at the Hillbrow morgue, Johannesburg. (Bram Janssen, AP)
Vellema has tried to integrate the missing persons police system, set up a system of electronic registries of the morgue and establish a protocol whereby a DNA sample is taken from each set vestiges arriving at the morgue. She sighs: "Resources". It's a word that comes up ten times in a half-hour conversation.
The bodies are found in Olifantsvlei or in a similar cemetery, in anonymous graves. During a recent visit to AP, a series of open rectangles awaited the bodies of unidentified and unclaimed people. They did not wait long: a van arrived with a dozen coffins.
Five coffins per grave and the space receives a marker. There were at least 180 tombstones for the anonymous dead.
READ MORE: Merkel's tour of Africa arrives in Ghana, migration is a concern
The International Committee of the Red Cross and one of Gauteng's morgues have launched a pilot project aimed at taking detailed photos, fingerprints, dental information and unidentified body DNA samples. This information goes into a database where, in theory, the bodies can be found.
"Everyone has the right to their dignity and their identity," said Stephen Fonseca, ICRC regional forensic scientist.
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