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Get well soon messages and drawings are seen outside Nelson Mandela's house in Johannesburg Jerome Delay/AP/Press Association Images

Mandela family tries to end gravesite row

The anti-apartheid hero is ill in hospital in South Africa, but a family feud is said to have broken out over his burial site.

LAWYERS FOR NELSON Mandela’s relatives met today to try to resolve a bitter family feud over the eventual burial site of the critically ill anti-apartheid hero.

Legal teams met all day in the southern city of Mthatha after 16 relatives last week asked a court to order the return of the remains of three of Mandela’s children to his ancestral village Qunu, a family lawyer said.

His eldest grandson Mandla allegedly had the graves moved to Mvezo, about 30 kilometres away, without the rest of the family’s consent in 2011.

Mandla is expected to file his answering papers on Tuesday and “then we will decide how to move forward,” the 16 relatives’ lawyer Sandla Sigadla told journalists after the talks.

Critically ill

Mandela, who remains critically ill in what is now his fourth week in hospital, had expressed his wish to be buried in Qunu, and his daughters want to have the children’s remains transferred so they can be together.

Previously the grandson has argued that Mandela should be buried at his birthplace Mvezo, where Mandla holds court as clan chief.

On Sunday Mandla said he was regrettably “compelled to go to court” and respond to the relatives’ legal challenge.

His spokesman Freddy Pilusa told AFP that Mandla “has no issues with the repatriation of any of those remains”.

“But obviously it has to be done by those people who have the authority to do so,” he added.

“Those things would have been decided in the family. But now they’re not in the family. They’re in the court.”

The hastily removed remains belonged to Mandela’s eldest son Thembekile who died in 1969, his nine-month-old infant Makaziwe who passed away in 1948, and Mandla’s own father Magkatho who died in 2005.

The AbaThembu kingdom, to which the Mandela clan belongs, has weighed in on the dispute and called a meeting with other royal families on July 8 “to bring the necessary harmony”.

Mandela’s parents are buried at the family gravesite in Qunu, about 500 meters (yards) from Mandela’s home, where security was stepped up on Monday according to an AFP photographer.

Mandela has three surviving children, and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

- © AFP, 2013

Pics: ‘Humbled’ Barack Obama visits Nelson Mandela’s prison cell>

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    Mute murphy 11
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    Jul 1st 2013, 7:23 PM

    Jesus he’s still alive. Lets hope he doesn’t read the journal, he’ll be we’ll p***d

    109
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    Mute M
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    Jul 1st 2013, 7:59 PM

    This is just the beginning, when he does go there will be all out war within his family. They all think as they are related to him that they are owed something, probably all to be anointed SA Royalty. Hello the new Zimbabwe when he is gone!

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    Mute Aindriú de Domhain
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    Jul 1st 2013, 7:29 PM

    I wish the media would back off from this until he’s actually dead. Its kind of ghoulish how they’re all waiting around for him to die and speculating about it, and covering sordid little family rows like this.

    Let him die in peace, then we can have the obituraries and debates. Personally, I hope he lives for several more years in good health, just to confound everyone waiting outside the hospital!

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    Mute John Johnson (KCCO)
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    Jul 1st 2013, 11:11 PM

    This is the best comment ive read on this site for quite a while..

    Could not agree more..

    I green thumbed it and then unthumbed it just so I could thumb it again.

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    Mute Mike Clinton
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    Jul 1st 2013, 7:30 PM

    The vultures are circling. .. FFS allow the man to pass with dignity.

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    Mute Rick MacRory
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    Jul 1st 2013, 7:57 PM

    How revolting to see contributors expressing their feelings with acronyms for swear words on any story about Mandela while he lies gravely ill. There are two things most obvious in life and the first is education………..

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    Mute Mike Clinton
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    Jul 1st 2013, 9:12 PM

    Zzzzzz

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    Mute Dhakina's Sword
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    Jul 2nd 2013, 1:42 AM

    True Mike. If you can’t allow a man to live in peace, at least have the decency to let him die in peace.

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    Mute Niall H
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    Jul 1st 2013, 7:21 PM

    Disgraceful!!

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    Mute Sharon
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    Jul 1st 2013, 8:47 PM

    God what a debacle! They have the cheek last week to be all holier than thou saying it’s against their culture to mention the death of a living person and now they’re fighting over his grave. Just what is going on? Is he ventilated? If so why? Is he dying? If so then why is no dignity afforded to a man who has lived his entire life with such dignity? Disgusted.

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    Jul 1st 2013, 8:21 PM

    A great man like Nelson should go out in a blaze of glory, not tethered to a machine with the vultures at his bedside. When they do let him go he should be cremated and the urn shot into space so that every time kids see a shooting star their parents can say ‘ That’s Nelson Mandela dropping by’

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    Mute Vinny Murphy
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    Jul 1st 2013, 8:27 PM

    Looks like the great man might get to see his 95th birthday after all…I presumed after massive state funeral when time comes that he would be encased in some state mausoleum….BTW, I wonder how old his father was when he passed away.

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