A woman has received the shock of her life while trying to collect her pension after being told she had died.
Busisiwe Duma was registered as "dead"
Mandisa Gcwabaza, a 77-year-old woman in South Africa has not been paid her pension for more than a year after being illegally declared dead last year.
According to local reports, she suspected the fraud was perpetrated when she lost her ID card about two years ago. However, with the help of her daughter, she is trying to prove to authorities that she is not dead.
Gogo Busisiwe Duma says she went to collect her monthly pension in March last year and was shocked to be told that she was dead. Someone had apparently reported her death to authorities and obtained a death certificate to cash a funeral insurance policy.
Gogo Duma said: “I was going to collect my pension when they told me I could not have any money because I was dead. At first I wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly. When it sank in I felt like I was losing my mind because it did not make any sense to me.”
Gogo Duma says she has never met the man who reported her dead and obtained the death certificate.
With the help of her daughter, she had to go through a year-long process to prove her identity with the authorities, which essentially meant proving that she wasn't dead.
She is however afraid of reporting the matter to this police, fearing that this could provoke the suspects to kill her "for real" because they obviously know her.
The investigation is ongoing.