Mandela’s daughter Zindzi dies at 59
JOHANNESBURG – Zindzi Mandela, the daughter of South African antiapartheid leaders Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, died at age 59.
State television South African Broadcasting Corp. reported that Mandela died at a hospital early Monday morning. The cause of her death was not announced.
She had been South Africa’s ambassador to Denmark since 2015.
The Mandelas’ daughter came to international prominence in 1985, when the white minority government offered to release Nelson Mandela from prison if he denounced violence perpetrated by his movement, the Africa National Congress, against apartheid, the brutal system of racial discrimination enforced in South Africa.
Zindzi Mandela read his letter rejecting the offer at a packed public meeting that was broadcast around the world.
Last year, Mandela stirred controversy by calling for the return of the whiteowned land to South Africa’s dispossessed Black majority.
“Dear Apartheid Apologists, your time is over. You will not rule again. We do not fear you. Finally #TheLandIsOurs,” she tweeted in June last year.
South African Foreign Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor expressed shock at Mandela’s death, describing her as a heroine.
“Zindzi will not only be remembered as a daughter of our struggle heroes, Tata Nelson and Mama Winnie Mandela, but as a struggle heroine in her own right. She served South Africa well,” Pandor said.
She is survived by her husband and four children.