Winnie launches bid for Mandela’s Qunu house

Mandela: left Winnie with nothing. Right: Madikizela-Mandela: bought the property while still married to Mandela.

Reuters/AFP/DPA/Johannesburg

Nelson Mandela’s second wife, Winnie, has launched a legal challenge to the will of the late anti-apartheid leader, the latest sign of feuding and bad blood in South Africa’s first family.

In a letter sent by her lawyer to the executors of Mandela’s estate, Madikizela-Mandela argued that her children should be in charge of Mandela’s ancestral home at Qunu in the Eastern Cape, where he was buried in December.

Madikizela-Mandela, a firebrand anti-apartheid activist who got divorced from Mandela in 1996 after it emerged she had cheated on him during his 27 years in prison, said she had bought the Qunu property in 1989 while Mandela was still behind bars, giving her ownership rights under traditional law.

Her lawyers said in a letter quoted by the Daily Dispatch newspaper that since the house in Qunu was bought while the two were still married, traditional custom dictated it should be inherited by Madikizela-Mandela and their children.

“This position becomes applicable irrespective of whether the wife was divorced or not,” lawyer Mvuyo Notyesi wrote in the letter dated July 18 – the late leader’s birthday, which is celebrated internationally as Mandela Day. “In fact, the property in question was obtained by Mrs Madikizela-Mandela whilst the husband was in prison.”

Madikizela-Mandela was left nothing from Mandela’s $4.1mn estate, which was divided between his family, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, former staff and several schools.

Each of his six children and some of his 17 grandchildren received $300,000. The Qunu property was left in a family trust.

Mandela’s third wife Graca Machel received four properties in her native Mozambique as well as cars, art work, and jewellery – many of which were her own assets that she brought to their marriage.

Mandela married Machel, the widow of Mozambique president Samora Machel, in 1998.

However, the letter from lawyer Notyesi said that the Qunu house should be given to Madikizela-Mandela’s two daughters, Zindzi and Zenani, and their children.

“It is only in this home that the children and grandchildren of Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela can conduct their own customs and tradition,” said the letter, seen by Reuters yesterday.

“The children born in a marriage between Mr Nelson Mandela and Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela shall be the joint custodians of the property, which devolve amongst their generations and generations,” it continued.

The lawyers’ letter said Madikizela-Mandela’s legal bid was neither attacking nor contesting the will but was “only asserting the traditional and customary rights on what may be contentious in the future”.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation said it had “no archival information” on when the property was bought.

The spat is the latest in a string of feuds between different factions of the Mandela family.

In one of the most damaging episodes, Mandela’s oldest male heir – his grandson Mandla – exhumed the bodies of three of Mandela’s children from Qunu and moved them to the nearby village of Mvezo, where Mandla had built a visitor centre dedicated to his grandfather.

As Mandela lay in hospital on life support a year ago, a rival family faction led by Mandla’s aunt, Makaziwe, won a court order for the bodies to be re-exhumed and returned to Qunu.

Two weeks after Mandela’s death, South African newspapers reported that Makaziwe had changed the locks on the Qunu house to keep Mandla out and had written him a letter ordering him to remove his dogs from the property.

Makaziwe’s lawyer did not answer phone calls and Mandla’s spokesman declined to comment on the letter.

Madikizela-Mandela’s lawyer said deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke, the will’s main executor, had acknowledged receipt of the letter but gave no further details.

In his autobiography, Mandela said that after his 1990 release from prison, “I set about plans to build a country house for myself in Qunu”.

The floor plan of the house, which was completed in 1993, was based on the warder’s house that he lived in at Victor Vester prison near the southwestern town of Paarl, where he spent the last 14 years of his imprisonment.

The modest compound in Mandela’s childhood village of Qunu came under the spotlight last week after the Eastern Cape provincial government was forced to step in to save dozens of starving cattle.

Siyakudumisa Gabada, who manages farming operations at the compound, said that a winter drought had made conditions at the farm “extremely difficult” and that the cattle were in a “terrible state”.

The former statesman, who died on December 5 at the age of 95 after a long illness, intended for his entire family to have access to the home.

“The Qunu property should be used by my family in perpetuity in order to preserve the unity of the Mandela family,” Mandela wrote in his will.