Mandela’s ex-wife’s legal dispute blocks finalisation of his will

The finalisation of former South African President Nelson Mandela’s will is being delayed due to his ex-wife’s legal battle over his Qunu home.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who is recovering in a Johannesburg hospital following a second back operation in many months, is appealing a high court decision which ruled that she has no claim on the residence where the anti-apartheid hero was born and buried.

Last year, she sparked an outcry when she launched a legal challenge against the estate, with her lawyers claiming that her divorce from the former president was fraudulently obtained.

George Bizos, Mandela’s lawyer, who is also recuperating in hospital after falling this week, said the will which was completed in 2014, cannot be executed because of the legal tangle.

Bizos, who represented the world statesman at his famous Treason Trial in the 1960s, confirmed that Madikizela-Mandela has filed a notice of an application to appeal the ruling “which we are going to oppose”.

He added that once that matter was resolved, “we will deal with the will.”

The will, which was first written in 2004, and last amended in 2008, excluded Madikizela-Mandela.

He left an estate worth about $3million to his children and grandchildren, staff and the African National Congress (ANC).

Madikizela-Mandela, who carried the hopes of black South Africans during Mandela’s lengthy imprisonment, was married to him for 38 years.

As at 1994 when Mandela became president, their marriage had suffered a setback as a result of the high-profile affair which she had.

Their divorce was finalised in 1996.

Mandela, who remarried former Mozambican First Lady Graca Machel on his 80th birthday, excluded Madikizela-Mandela from his will.

He died in 2013.