Holomisa’s homely tip to Madiba
UNITED Democratic Movement leader and Mandela family friend, Bantu Holomisa, has weighed in on the contentious affair involving late president Nelson Mandela’s Qunu home.
Holomisa told the Saturday Dispatch yesterday that when he first visited Mandela after his release from prison, he asked him about his modest four-roomed house in Orlando West.
“I asked him whether that was his house. I said to him it does not even have a kraal. It was a four-roomed house.
“He said, ‘Yes, my child. I am going to live here now’. I told him he should not be itshipha [A person who abandons home] and that he should build his home in Qunu.”
He said Mandela must have taken his words seriously because after he left, he phoned him. “We met in Mthatha at Nkululekweni. He told me he had taken what I said to him to heart. He instructed me to go and get a plan of the house he lived in at Victor Verster in Cape Town.
“I made inquiries. I got the plan and appointed a construction company in Mthatha. That was the first house built,” he said.
Holomisa said
when the media publicised that Mandela was building his Qunu home, some businessmen phoned Mandela and asked to build the house for him.
He had advised Mandela against that, and suggested they use funds which Mandela got through the awards he had been honoured with. “He phoned his lawyer Ismail Ayob and he confirmed that there was money available and the house was built,” he said. — abongilem@dispatch.