As former South African President, Nelson Mandela, remained in a critical condition in hospital on Friday, a family feud over where the 94-year-old former president should be buried went to the courts.
Mandela’s oldest daughter, Makaziwe, and 15 other family members have pressed a court application to get Mandela’s grandson to return the bodies of three of Mandela’s children to their original graves in the eastern rural village of Qunu, according to the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
The grandson, Mandla Mandela, acknowledges having reburied the three bodies 20 kilometers (13 miles) away in the Mvezo village, where he plans to create a Mandela shrine, hotel and soccer stadium, according to the South African Press Association.
Grandson Mandla Mandela has until Saturday to respond to the court filing, reports said.
The anti-apartheid leader built his retirement home in Qunu and was living there until his repeated hospitalisations which started at the end of last year. Nelson Mandela attended the burial of his son at the family plot in Qunu in 2005, and it was widely expected that the leader himself would be buried there.
But his grandson exhumed the bodies of Mandela’s three children and moved them to nearby Mvezo, where he holds authority as chief.