Celebrating 100 years of service by sharing our success

Who is AVBOB? Our name stands for funerals and funeral insurance in South Africa. But we are so much more than this: yes, we are that sympathetic voice on the other end of the line, a shoulder to cry on, a steady partner to rely on… but we are also a champion of literacy, the builder of schools and libraries, a sponsor of poetry and song. 100 years old. And 100 years strong.

It all began with a singular vision. In the darkness and death following the First World War, returning soldiers brought the deadly Spanish Flu with them in 1918. Deaths increased to the extent that more people passed away in a single day than would normally die in a month. The South African landscape was littered with the makeshift mass graves of those devastated by disease and poverty. In the midst of this devastation, a partially-blind schoolmaster, HH van Rooijen, took it upon himself to create a burial society – a stokvel, if you will. The idea was simple: each human being is entitled to a dignified funeral, at an affordable price. One hundred years later, that principle still holds true for AVBOB.

On 15 August 1918, AVBOB was formally founded out of an informal grouping which had been founded in 1915 to provide mutual support to its members. This small beginning would grow to become a household name at the southernmost tip of Africa.

Van Rooijen’s approach was to put people first. The money, he believed, was secondary, and would somehow always follow.

And his policy to ‘put people first’ paid off, and the society grew steadily. In 1922, AVBOB purchased its first motor vehicle, transported by train to Bloemfontein. Gone were the horsedrawn hearses. In March that year, AVBOB conducted its first state funeral for the late General Christiaan de Wet.

By 1928, AVBOB was in a position to make its own hearses, and was finding ways to support local suppliers in response to growing demand.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, AVBOB faced a crisis. Previously, all the raw materials needed for funeral ware were imported, and they were now unavailable. So AVBOB began to manufacture all funeral goods locally. With the scarcity of sheet metal at the time, tin cans were fashioned into exquisite, hand-painted wreaths. AVBOB was upcycling and was ‘proudly South African’ long before these terms even existed!

AVBOB is everywhere

As the organisation continued to grow, the slogan, appropriately, was ‘AVBOB is everywhere’. And AVBOB was for everyone. In late 1947, AVBOB became the first organisation to sell funeral policies to all racial groups.

AVBOB outgrew the small hamlet of Bloemfontein, and needed specialised legal, actuarial and medical underwriting services. So, in the mid-50s, AVBOB set up its head office in Pretoria. And in the mid-60s, the first AVBOB branch opened in Namibia.

Throughout of the ‘70s, AVBOB stood strong and provided funerals to all South Africans, regardless of race, colour or creed, covering the spectrum from the legendary Ciskei chief, General Magoma to the Reverend Petrus John Masango, Archbishop of the St. John Apostolic Church of South Africa.

It was a dark day when, in 1995, AVBOB conducted the mass funeral of 104 mineworkers tragically killed in the Orkney mining disaster. It is because of these lived experiences that AVBOB sees itself not only as a family, but as a blueprint for how the total South African population should be served. It’s for this reason that, on 5 December 2013, AVBOB was selected to lay our beloved Madiba to rest.

Once again, this is due to the fact that AVBOB is a philanthropic brand that believes in serving the needs of our nation, needs that extend beyond our core purpose as a provider of funerals and funeral insurance. It’s why AVBOB became a mutual assurance society in 1951, and why it has fought to remain so to this day.

As a mutual, AVBOB has no external shareholders who receive dividends. Over the years, AVBOB has allocated billions of rands to our members in the form of special bonuses and free funeral benefits. On 15 August 2018, in our centenary year, we have allocated the single largest special bonus of R3.5 billion to our members. This demonstrates the ability that AVBOB has to empower our members and provide access to economic participation.

In July 2017, in a truly unorthodox move, AVBOB announced a nationwide poetry competition in all 11 official languages, and open to all South Africans, with usage payments awarded to all poems published on the competition website. A cash prize of R10 000 plus a book prize of R2 500 was awarded to the first-prize poems in all 11 language categories, at a prestigious gala evening held in June 2018.

"A 100-poem print anthology was created from the website entries, including specially commissioned poems from SA’s top poets. The 100th poem, fittingly, was delivered in the Khoisan language, Nǀuu, from the words of Ouma Katriena Esau, one of the last four surviving speakers of this dialect."

AVBOB has always believed in the importance of the arts in society, as a form of social upliftment. That’s why AVBOB has been a proud sponsor of the Mzansi Youth Choir since 2013. The MYC choristers, drawn from Soweto and the greater Johannesburg area, have performed on stages worldwide.

It’s rare to find an organisation that has weathered change so successfully, and yet has managed to remain true to its core identity. AVBOB is 100 years’ young, and is determined to remain relevant and responsive to change and transformation.

That’s why our workforce, from the top down, is a diverse, inclusive community subscribing to our deep commitment to caring for all – not one privileged group at the expense of the others.

In our commitment to youth empowerment and entrepreneurship, AVBOB adopted a group of aspiring young people – the Diepsloot Kasi Hive – and provided them with the resources to reach their goals. We demonstrate our commitment further by empowering local township entrepreneurs to run their own undertaking enterprises.

We have stood proudly in the service of South African families for a century. This is our story, told over time, with a narrative thread that runs all the way back to that post-war world of devastation, and forwards to the future. AVBOB has grown from saving a people, to serving a nation. And like the ancient baobab tree that was chosen as AVBOB’s centenary symbol, AVBOB intends to stand strong for our people – our family – for the next 100 years. Because, with AVBOB, family comes first. Always.