The South African leader Tshekede Pitso had a last wish before dying that he wants to get buried inside his Mercedes Benz. Chief Pitso, 72, was driven to his final resting place on the back of a trailer dressed in his favourite white suit with both his hands attached to the steering wheel.
Chief Pitso collapsed and died last week after stepping out of his home to walk to his trusty Mercedes parked on the drive, where he would listen to the car stereo and ‘just chill’.
Family sources said the widower was not unwell, but simply died of old age and that he had specified to his surviving three daughters and two sons to bury him in his car.
Thabiso Mantutle, director of the Phomolong Funeral Parlour, said: ‘We have never had such a request before to be buried in a car and it was a difficult and stressful task to undertake.
Then, funeral directors guided the 1990s, E500 Mercedes, down ramps and into the ‘grave’, which had been specially dug out by an excavator to eight feet deep.
Pitso would reportedly like to sit in the car to relax and listen to music.
The former businessman and married father-of-six were then laid to rest with an official religious ceremony at the family funeral plot at their home in South Africa.
Pitso formerly owned a chain of supermarkets and was also a respected local chef.
Thabiso Mantutle, director of the Phomolong Funeral Parlour, said: “We have never had such a request before to be buried in a car and it was a difficult and stressful task to undertake.
“We had to make sure we had all the correct measurements to completely bury the car and to construct the ramp to get it in the grave and get all the correct paperwork done.”
He added that the parlour had to get “all the official permissions from all the relevant authorities to carry out the funeral”.
