Africa-Press – Lesotho. A nephew and an aunt are locked in a bitter legal wrangle over compensation after they lost a piece of land to the Polihali Dam project. The nephew, Nteo Nkalai, is at loggerheads with ’Maqetelo Kente (nee ’Matau Nkalai).
Nkalai is the son of the late half-brother of ’Maqetelo Kente, Cooper Nkalai. Cooper and Kente’s father, Tuoane Nkalai, had married two wives and Kente was born in the second house.
Kente has asked the Northern Region High Court in Tšifa-li-Mali to interdict her nephew from holding himself out as an heir to Tuoane Nkalai’s estate.
She has also applied for an order interdicting the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA), which is managing the Polihali Dam construction in Mokhotlong, from paying compensation to Nteo Nkalai.
She says her polygamous father Tuoane had verbally appointed her as the heiress to his estate because at the time of his death he did not have a living son in the second house.
She says her mother, Tuoane’s second wife, died in October 1998 leaving the property with her. She told the court that she had already begun using the estate, before both her parent’s death.
She was also ploughing the fields on their behalf when they were still alive and continued doing so after they died without any disturbance from any member of the first house, she says.
She told the court that it was only in November last year when she was formally endorsed by family members as heiress to the estate of the deceased Tuoane.
She says earlier in 2018 when the Polihali Water Project resumed, she was surprised when during a family meeting convened at the request of her nephew she heard him claiming that he was the heir.
Kente says her nephew produced a letter from his late father Cooper Nkalai which claimed that he was the heir. “The letter purported to appoint Nteo as heir to the property of my parents,” she says.
Kente says some members of the family present at that meeting, including a senior member of the family ’Maselatela Nkalai, refused to endorse the nephew as the heir to her parents’ property.
She says the basis for the refusal was that they knew that Tuoane had left a will, albeit a verbal one, that his daughter would be the heiress. She told the court that when the village chief summoned them to his court to mediate the nephew refused to attend the meeting.
“He said there would be no meetings that he would attend except when there is an order of the court that ordered him to do so,” she told the court in papers.
Kente said they made several attempts to meet up with Nteo Nkalai to settle the issue but failed. The case is continuing in the Northern Region High Court.
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