Harare — Zimbabweans can create a black market in almost anything these days.

We have those smartly-dressed but slightly seedy characters flashing open their jackets in suburban carparks to display the tips of cigarette boxes; we have the cooking oil specialists operating out of Highfield backyards.

And now we have a black market in graves, or so the Harare City Council has found to its horror.

People reserved graves years ago, in some cases decades ago, for themselves and their families. Now they are selling these to bereaved families who want to bury their loved ones in the older and established parts of municipal cemeteries, instead of pioneering the new sections of Granville.

The council allows the transfer of graves, but has anecdotal evidence that huge profits are being made on some transfers of empty graves, which surprises them because there is no shortage of grave sites in the city. The council has expanded cemeteries to meet demand.

By now we probably already have people reserving graves for fake relatives in order to sell these later at a huge profit. Will we have odd types hanging around cemeteries and approaching people to see if they want to buy a grave? Just how does a black market in graves actually develop?

The council is fighting back, introducing for its reserved graves a version of the policy of "use it or lose it".

Grave holders will have to present themselves physically to the council, to prove they are both alive and living in the city, or at least in Zimbabwe, to keep their grave.

In other words, if you buy a grave while alive you must lie in it when you breathe your last.

But, to be more serious, the black market suggests that people are prepared to pay a premium to have their close relatives buried in a more respectable cemetery than some of the new areas overgrown with long grass and weeds.

The popularity of the Glen Forest private cemetery among the well-heeled is ample proof that such a demand does exist and the council can both kill off the black market and provide a service for the public by taking this into account.

It should be possible to work with a finance house or a private concern to create and maintain a cemetery. Because graves exist in perpetuity, and so need to be maintained when the rest of the family is long gone, it will be necessary to have a trust fund with the payments invested in inflation-proof income-generating equities or property.

The income from these investments could then be used to hire people to mow grass, plant trees and shrubs, and provide basic maintenance.

A respectable low-maintenance cemetery should not be that difficult to develop and, considering the respect with which Zimbabweans tend to hold dead relatives, be popular.

What has created the black market is the wilderness that has grown up in many parts of Granville. What will kill the black market is doing something to develop a better-maintained cemetery at a price the ordinary person can afford.

Perhaps the plan by the council to extend Warren Hills Cemetery in partnership with a private developer could be the start of such a new scheme.