CROSS - CULTURAL VALUES AND TRADITIONS ON CREMATION IN ZIMBABWE: A REVIEW OF BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Background: The shortage of burial space in urban centres has become limited as most allocated spaces have been filled, with limited alternatives for burial. The review article has a perspective of assessing the impact of cross cultural values and traditions of burial space with comparative dimensions of beliefs of burial versus cremation. Objectives: The study evaluated the differences in beliefs and the transition dynamics of traditional burial practices versus the non – availability of burial space. Method: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta – Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines search strategy was applied in the review. Databases that were searched included ProQuest (1764 articles reviewed and screened), EBSCO (120 articles reviewed and screened), PubMed (565 articles reviewed and screened), Taylor and Francis Online (150 articles reviewed and screened) and African Journals Online (25 articles reviewed and screened). A search strategy that combined the Boolean operator ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ and text words representing key concepts of our study: cross – cultural values, traditions on cremation and burial beliefs and practices was applied. A total number of 56 articles met the criteria for the discourse and made contributions to the review on this paper. Conclusions: This article has shown that there are several key issues at stake for the cremation practice in Zimbabwe. Chief among them being the traditional, religious beliefs and practices. Furthermore, the majority of the people in Zimbabwe still have the same belief system of the burial processes which shows limited acceptance of the cremation process despite circumstances that may exist such as lack of burial space, environmental pollution aspects and burial cost reduction.