Dad goes to court over ‘undignified’ TV show
Acts to protect daughter from exploitation in ‘Being Mandela’
A FATHER has forced Fox TV to edit out his daughter from an “undignified” reality show now being shown in South Africa.
Being Mandela, which features Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s granddaughters Zamaswazi Dlamini and Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, was the subject of a court application in Johannesburg this week.
The father brought an urgent high court action against Fox TV, Multichoice Africa and TopTV to prevent them from broadcasting an episode in which his daughter appears.
The application was withdrawn when Fox TV gave an undertaking that the child had been edited out.
The father, who cannot be named because his daughter is under age, said: “I achieved what I wanted to. I wanted to protect my child from this show and from the public.”
Being Mandela was made and shown in the US, where the two Mandela granddaughters live.
It show Zamaswazi and Zaziwe mainly shopping and leading the lives of the idle rich. They talk mostly about shopping, men, their “strict” grandfather and “fun-loving big mommy” grandmother, “who is the opposite of strict”.
They are the daughters of Zenani Mandela-Dlamini and Thumbumuzi Dlamini, a prince of Swaziland.
The sisters also have a clothing line called LWTF, named after Long Walk To Freedom, Mandela’s autobiography.
The father told the Sunday Times this week that he turned to the court in desperation.
In his affidavit he says: “Being Mandela is a portrayal of individuals and the family in a manner that is sensationalised and undignified . . . Many members of my family had seen the show . . . and they are unanimously embarrassed by it and by my child’s involvement.”
The mother of the child refused to agree to the father’s requests — communicated to her since September 2011 — not to put their small child in the show.
In his affidavit, the father says the mother, “who is a wellknown” celebrity, “deliberately misled” him about their daughter’s appearance in the show.
He says he turned to the high court “because this court is the upper guardian of every child”.
“I’m merely trying to protect the best interests of my very young child . . . I am a deeply concerned father trying to protect his child against the considerably greater might of a number of commercial entities who are using my daughter for their profit.
“I am not attacking the Mandela family or being insensitive in doing so at a time when former president Nelson Mandela is gravely ill. I have the utmost respect for the icon that is Nelson Mandela and for his legacy, which is one of enormous dignity and deep humility, and it is the respondents [the Mandela children and Fox and TopTV] who have seen fit to use this legacy in what I deem to be an extremely unseemly manner, regardless of the grave illness of Madiba himself,” he said.
He has joint custody of the child, according to court papers. He read about his daughter’s role in the show in newspapers in 2011. His main objections were:
That the child will become a “mini-celebrity . . . the show has been very badly received, and as a result my child will become notorious for her association with the show”; and
“The show is manipulative and exploitative of the child . . . She is given scripted roles to play that are not in keeping with her character. My child is not a naughty brat, but she has been given scripted scenes in which she appears having tantrums and misbehaving.”
The mother did not respond to requests for comment. New Vision Pictures, which made the show, and one of its directors, Graeme Swanepoel, also did not respond.