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South African police opened an investigation yesterday into Nelson Mandela’s grandson on suspicion of illegally exhuming the bodies of three of the ailing anti-apartheid hero’s children, a police spokesman said. |
The investigation is the latest twist in an unedifying family feud that has drawn global attention as the 94-year-old Mandela lies in a Pretoria hospital in a critical condition.
Sixteen members of the Mandela family have already won a court order forcing Mandla Mandela - officially chief of the Mandela clan - to return the bodies that he dug up two years ago from the village of Qunu, where Nelson Mandela grew up.
Mandla had the remains moved 20km to his Eastern Cape village of Mvezo. He has not commented on why he moved the bodies but Mvezo is where Mandela was actually born and where many South Africans believe Mandla wants South Africa’s first black president to be buried.
The three Mandela children buried in Mvezo are an infant girl who died in 1948, a boy, Thembi, who died in a car crash in 1969, and Makgatho, who died of an Aids-related illness in 2005. In all, Mandela fathered six children from his three marriages.
“We have started our investigation and we will send the case to the senior prosecutor for a decision on whether to prosecute or not,” Eastern Cape police spokesman Mzukisi Fatyela said.
Nelson Mandela has spent more than three weeks battling a lung infection, forcing South Africans to accept that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who helped end white-minority rule will not be around forever.
A South African court yesterday ordered the return of the remains of three of Nelson Mandela’s children to his ancestral village, following a bitter family feud linked to the eventual burial site of the ailing anti-apartheid hero.
A judge in the southern city of Mthatha instructed Mandela’s eldest grandson Mandla to transfer the remains to Qunu by 3pm (1300 GMT) today.
Mandla allegedly had the graves moved to Mvezo, about 30km away, without the rest of the family’s consent in 2011.
Mandela, who remains critically ill in what is now his fourth week in hospital, had expressed his wish to be buried in Qunu, and his daughters want to have the children’s remains transferred so they can be together.
Mandela’s parents are also interred at the family gravesite in Qunu. Previously the grandson has argued that Mandela should be buried at his birthplace Mvezo, where Mandla holds court as clan chief.
The court order was issued in response to a request by 16 relatives of the revered leader, including two daughters and several grandchildren.
“I now rule that the respondent complies with the order to return the remains by 3:00 pm on Wednesday,” said Judge Lusindiso Pakade.
The remains belonged to Mandela’s eldest son Thembekile who died in 1969, his nine-month-old infant Makaziwe who passed away in 1948, and Mandla’s own father Magkatho who died in 2005.
Mandla’s spokesman Freddy Pilusa said on Monday that the grandson “has no issues with the repatriation of any of those remains”.
“But obviously it has to be done by those people who have the authority to do so,” he added.
“Those things would have been decided in the family. But now they’re not in the family. They’re in the court.”
Pilusa said yesterday that he was unable to comment on the court ruling.
Mandela has three surviving children, and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.