CASHING IN ON AN ICON
The Randelas keep piling up
An enterprising Cape Town hotel is putting Nelson Mandela’s favourite food on the menu to coincide with the former president’s second volume of memoirs.
This comes amid accusations that Mandela’s former doctor, Vejay Ramlakan, tried to cash in on his links with the statesman in his book, Mandela’s Last Years, which has since been withdrawn.
The Belmond Mount Nelson’s offering includes a copy of Dare not Linger and a threecourse meal inspired by Madiba’s favourite food, including oxtail soup and Farida Omar’s chicken curry with samoosas and roti. Omar smuggled food to Mandela and his fellow political prisoners in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor Prison.
To add spice to the meals, they will be served in a restaurant “adjacent to the room where Mandela enjoyed a meal or two”.
For just under R12 000, two guests can share a room at the hotel for two nights, and for an extra R1 250 they can spend an hour with Mandela’s former jailer, Christo Brand, or take a guided two-hour “Footsteps to Freedom” walk around central Cape Town.
This week Gabrielle Palmer, the hotel’s communications manager, said there was nothing controversial about the package because “Mandela is a national treasure”. Palmer said the hotel had seen no need to get the go-ahead from the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
“We are not disclosing anything that hasn’t been out there in the public, and the book is already being promoted online,” said Palmer. “We are not like that doctor, nothing is impinging on the family’s privacy.”
Analysts say the biggest beneficiaries of the Mandela brand will always be his family. Author and columnist Max du Preez, who wrote The Rough Guide to Mandela in 2011, believes “the family will get a constant stream of revenue from royalties, from books and other things for about 30 years”.
Political analyst Somadoda Fikeni said the family “will always benefit in some sense because for people of that scale, to be appointed to positions such as an ambassador’s post is easier than for the ordinary folk whose names you can’t easily find on Google and in the phone book”.
He added: “They can’t suffer like everyone else. After a generation society will be able to separate the owner of the brand from his children. But for now things look good for Mandela’s family.”
Brand analyst Chris Moerdyk said family connections and what they used to call the “old school-tie brigade” were important. “If you and I had the surname Mandela there would be opportunities open to us.”