The late Nelson Mandela’s daughter, Zindzi, who owns a R2 million house in Houghton, shares her property with vandals, squatters and rats.
Mandela’s family has been at war, bickering between themselves over his many millions. It is feared that his surviving family will be plunged in to deep rifts over who stands to gain his fortune.
Mandela was married three times and fathered six children – only three of whom, his daughters Makaziwe, Zenani and Zindzi, are still alive.
Neighbours in the upmarket Joburg suburb are complaining bitterly that the house is drawing bad elements and crime into the area and that it is devaluing their own properties.
The complainants did not want to be named, but said the pavement outside Mandela’s house is filled with rubbish and “rats are running wild in the thick undergrowth”. People urinate and throw rubbish onto the pavement.
“We have complained, but nothing gets done because an influential family owns it,” said one neighbour.
The house, in Fifth Street, has been badly vandalised and has only a few walls and some roofing left. It has been stripped of all electrical fittings and plumbing pipes.
So desperate are the neighbours that they are now asking for permission to tear down the standing walls themselves in an effort to make sure that squatters can no longer live on the property.
“This property, worth a couple of million rand, belongs to a person who last year asked for legal aid in a case involving a burial dispute,” said another neighbour.
Title deeds for the property, seen by The Star, show the registered owner as the Zindzi Mandela Family Trust, and that it was bought for R2m.
The same address is given by Zindzi as her residential address on other legal documents.
Following complaints by neighbours, city councillor Marcelle Ravid called in the City of Joburg’s environmental health inspectors.
After an inspection was conducted on December 19, a notice was issued to the owners – again listed as the Zindzi Mandela Family Trust – instructing them to clean up the property.
Zindzi was given 21 days to clean up the property. However, the deadline has since expired, nothing has been done and the house remains in the same derelict condition.
Source: IOL
