Mandela’s family in court

Grandson accused by family members of moving graves.

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA — As South Africans continued their long and painful vigil Tuesday for critically ill elder statesman Nelson Mandela, his family was in court in a Shakespearean battle over the bones of his three dead children.

The drama — with accusations of illegitimacy, appeals to the family’s ancestors, allegations of secret exhumations of family bones and a battle over a chieftaincy — has horrified much of the nation.

Tuesday’s court battle in the Eastern Cape town of Mtatha came after 16 family members, led by Makaziwe, took court action Friday to force Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, to return the bones of three of the elder statesman’s children. The court Friday granted an interim order that he return the bodies, which he contested Tuesday.

According to the family members, Mandla secretly dug up the bones in the dead of night without informing the rest of the family. When the family opened the graves last week, with Mandela gravely ill, there were no bones to be found.

South African media reported that Mandla had them reburied in 2011 in his own area, Mvezo, the elder Mandela’s birthplace. The move would help ensure his grandfather was buried there, because Nelson Mandela had expressed his wish to be buried next to his children. Mandla has been building a tourist center at Mvezo, with a hotel and other facilities.

The opposing family faction insists that the bones must be moved back to a family grave site in Qunu, Nelson Mandela’s home village.

They have also called in the police. The Port Elizabeth Herald reported Tuesday that authorities, at the family’s request, had launched a criminal investigation against Mandla for allegedly tampering illegally with graves.