Gravediggers exhume bodies in Mandela feud

Police broke into a compound owned by Nelson Mandela’s grandson yesterday to exhume the remains of the former president’s three children, which are at the centre of a bitter family feud.

Officers in three cars escorted a hearse, a team of gravediggers and several Mandela relatives to the compound in Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape, after a High Court ruling that the remains should be returned to their original resting place about 40km away.

Mandla Mandela, an MP for the ruling African National Congress and the eldest grandson of the celebrated statesman, had the bodies – one of them his late father – moved to Mvezo in 2011. He was building a £4 million visitors’ centre and hoped his grandfather would one day be buried there too. The centre includes a hotel and conference centre and is still under construction.

Mandela clan members have accused him of seeking to cash in on the pilgrims who will seek out the former president’s final resting place.

The court decision paves the way for Mandela, who remains critically ill in hospital, to be buried alongside his children in Qunu, the village where he retired, and that he has said holds his earliest and happiest childhood memories.

Wesley Hayes, a lawyer acting for more than a dozen Mandela relatives, said they were ‘‘delighted’’ with the court’s ruling.

Mandla, who was appointed head of the Mandela clan in 2007, said he would abide by the decision, but pledged to ‘‘fight for his right to put on record his side of the story’’.