Mandela grave shut while family bickers
What should be a popular heritage site is hampered by family battles
FAMILY battles over the grave of Nelson Mandela have effectively shut the site for the past three years. This has meant that thousands of people wanting to pay their respects at what should have become the country’s most popular heritage site, have been unable to.
Instead, bickering and bitterness have left the site undeveloped, but well guarded to keep out any visitors.
And although the family says development plans are now in the beginning stages, it will be at least another 18 months before these are expected to be complete.
Anyone hoping to visit the site in Qunu on Mandela Day on Monday will be left bitterly disappointed.
The Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Board communications officer, Oyanga Ngalika, said that although it was one of the province’s major attractions, “bickering, issues and internal arguments” had hampered progress.
The drama began even before Mandela’s death. His eldest daughter, Makaziwe, supported by his wife, Graça Machel, got an Mthatha High Court order compelling Madiba’s grandson, Mandla, to return the bones of two of Mandela’s relatives. The rest of the family argued that the statesman was on life support and it was urgent that he be buried in peace alongside their remains at the Qunu site.
Mandla had secretly removed the bones and reburied them at Mvezo, where he is the traditional chief.
The debate about where the former president should be buried was not confined to the Mandela family, however, also involving chiefs and leaders in the area. Some believed he should be buried at Mvezo, where he was born, but others argued for Qunu, where Mandela lived until he was nine.
Still others suggested the Mandela family graveyard, about 500m from his burial site on the opposite side of the N2 highway, where his father, Mphakanyiswa, and his mother, Nosekeni, are buried.
Last week, Daludumo Mtirara, the spokesman for the Royal House of AbaThembu, confirmed the site was locked and under guard.
He said no visitors were allowed and “no activities” would take place there on Monday.
Regarding future plans for the site, Mtirara said the family would inform the AbaThembu King once they had made a final decision. They considered the issue “a private family matter”.
But he conceded that “Mandela was also for the people of South Africa” and that “maybe in time it would be good if the public was able to visit the site”.
The Mandela family, the National Heritage Council and the government had to finalise plans for the site.
Nokuzola Tetani, the spokeswoman for the Nelson Mandela Museum in Mthatha, where most of the festivities will take place on Monday, said thousands of visitors were interested in visiting Mandela’s grave. As an alternative, she took them to the Mandela family gravesite on the opposite side of the N2.
She also took visitors to the Qunu branch of the Nelson Mandela Museum, on a hill overlooking the burial site.
“As long as you don’t enter, you are allowed to view it from afar,” said Tetani, adding that the museum had applied to Unesco to declare the site an international heritage site.
“International tour operators from around the world all want to go to the site,” Tetani said.