Winnie slams prominent executors of Madiba’s estate
WINNIE Madikizela-Mandela has lashed out at the executors of Nelson Mandela’s estate for associating themselves with a “racist and colonialist” view that customary law was inferior to civil law.
She was replying to affidavits submitted by deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, Eastern Cape Judge President Themba Sangoni and Advocate George Bizos in her application where she lays claim to the Qunu property registered under her late ex-husband’s name.
She said the expert opinion submitted by Professor Digby Koyana, on behalf of the executors – that her customary mar- riage was overridden by her civil marriage – was a colonialist assumption.
“I have great difficulty in understanding how the [executors], particularly those conversant with African customs and practices and the status of African customary law in our constitutional dispensation, can associate themselves with that submission.
“It is rooted in a racist and colonialist assumption that customary law is inferior to civil law and hence that a marriage under customary law is obliterated when a couple marry civilly,” Madikizela-Mandela wrote.
She said her customary marriage to Mandela was never dissolved. Madikizela-Mandela al- so lambasted former Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom, who confirmed the donation of the land to Mandela.
She said that Hanekom based his decision on an alleged incorrect letter purported to be signed by a leader from the Ebotwe Tribal Authority agreeing to the donation.
“[Hanekom] misconstrued his powers, ignored material information placed before him clearly indicating that there was no resolution from the tribal community, and by so doing failed to apply his mind, proceeding to donate and authorise the registration of the deed of grant, acting irrationally and unreasonably.
“The actions of the minister were clearly unlawful and irregular.”
Times Media had reported that the former deputy secretary of the authority, Chief Zwelidumile Mbande, denied having held a meeting with Hanekom’s department and agreeing to the donation of the land. Madikizela-Mandela also denied claims by Rural and Agrarian Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti that she opportunistically waited for Mandela to die before making her claim.
“My understanding had always been that the Qunu property is our common home. The land belongs to the community under the chiefs who hold the land in trust for the state.
“I would not have expected that my late husband secretly registered the property in his name,” she wrote.
Had she known about the registration while Mandela was alive, she would have raised the matter with him.
Madikizela-Mandela said the suggestion by Nkwinti that land in rural areas or tribal communities must be registered was a weapon used by “oppressors and colonialists to take black people’s land”.
On claims made when she lodged the application that she was greedy and opportunistic, Madikizela-Mandela said if she was, she would be “claiming a share as a wife either before the divorce or after the death.
“I am not laying such a claim. I am protecting my customs, traditions and those of my generations in asserting this claim.”
Last year, she said she never thought her late ex-husband would give her children’s legacy away to his third wife, Graca Machel, who had the “whole world in Mozambique”.