Johannesburg - Family battles around the grave of Nelson Mandela’s grave have in effect shut the site, for the past three years, to thousands of people wanting to pay their respects to the prominent statesman of the century at what should have become the country’s most popular heritage site.
Bickering and bitterness have left the site undeveloped, but it is well guarded to keep out any visitors.
Although the family say development plans are in the beginning stages, it will be at least 18 months before these can be expected to be complete.
Anyone trying to visit the site in Qunu, Eastern Cape, on Mandela Day on Monday will be bitterly disappointed.
Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Board communications officer Oyanga Ngalika said although it was one of the province’s major attractions, “bickering, issues and internal arguments” had hampered progress for the past three years.
The drama began even before Mandela’s death in December 2013, with his eldest surviving daughter, Makaziwe, and his wife, Graça Machel, obtaining an Mthatha High Court order compelling his Mandela’s grandson Mandla to return the remains of two of Nelson Mandela’s relatives.
The rest of the family argued that the statesman was on life support and it was urgent he be buried in peace alongside his relatives’ remains at the gravesite at Qunu.
Mandla had secretly removed the bones and reburied them at Mvezo, where he is the traditional chief.
The debate that raged about where Mandela should be buried was not confined to the Mandela family, however. It also involved chiefs and leaders in the area.
Some believed Mandela should be buried at Mvezo, where he was born. Others argued for Qunu, where Mandela lived until he was nine and where he built his home after his release from prison.
Still others suggested the family graveyard, about 500m from Mandela’s eventual burial site and on the opposite side of the N2 – where his father, Mphakanyiswa, and his mother, Nosekeni – were buried, should be chosen.
This week, Daludumo Mtirara, spokesperson for the Royal house of abaThembuMandela, confirmed the site was locked, and guarded by security staff.
He said no visitors were allowed and “no activities” would take place there on Mandela Day.
On future plans for the site, Mtirara said once the family made a decision, they would inform the abaThembu king.
The Mandela family were the “core” decision-makers, and the issue considered “a private family matter”.
However, Mtirara conceded “Mandela was also for the people of South Africa”, and that “maybe in time it would be good if the public is able to visit the site like any other site of our heroes”.
“I presume there are discussions in the background that will culminate in a decision to allow people to visit the gravesite to pay their respects to him,” said Mtirara.
Nokuzola Tetani, 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 takes 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 world statesman’s burial site.
“As long as you don’t enter, you are allowed to view it from afar,” Tetani said, adding that the museum had applied to Unesco to declare the site an international heritage site.
“Tour operators from across the world all want to go to the site. People are becoming more and more interested in the burial site.”
Saturday Star