Madikizela-Mandela dies with Qunu land ownership not fully settled
3 April 2018
Lauded as one of the fiercest icons in the struggle against apartheid, the one battle Winnie Madikizela-Mandela could not see through to its end was reclaiming the land upon which the Qunu homestead of her former husband, Nelson Mandela, was built.
Madikizela-Mandela, who died after a prolonged illness on Monday, had been locked in a fierce legal battle to claim ownership of the land, which she claimed was allocated to her in 1989.
The land was donated to former president Mandela in November 1997, but in 2014, Madikizela-Mandela claimed she had only just discovered the property had been registered to her ex-husband.
Madikizela-Mandela approached the Mthatha High Court in the Eastern Cape in 2016 to decide on the ownership of the land, but her application was later dismissed.