Zindzi touched hearts from across the world
ZINDZI Mandela-Hlongwane, former president Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s youngest daughter, who died in Joburg aged 59 on Monday, is being deeply mourned and remembered by those who personally knew her.
Yesterday, Thabo Mbeki Foundation playwright legend Duma Ndlovu and the Whitney Houston Foundation in the US sent their condolences to her family. The foundation shared a picture of her and Houston taken in Soweto in November 1994.
Denmark’s Ambassador to South Africa, Tobias Elling Rehfeld, yesterday, while speaking to SABC News, described Mandela-Hlongwane as a loving, outgoing person who understood the importance of diplomatic relations.
The Mbeki Foundation said her untimely and unexpected passing had deprived the country of an activist for liberation, democracy and a better life for its people.
“The immense challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic emphasise the importance of the duty to pick up her fallen spear. Quite correctly and fortunately, the media has made it a point to remind us of the contribution she made further to inspire the struggling masses of our people when she delivered president Mandela’s message from prison at the Johannesburg Jabulani amphitheatre in 1985,” the foundation said in a statement.
South African journalist and author Gail Smith, who has spent the past two years doing research for her upcoming book on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, remembered Mandela-Hlongwane as someone who had suffered under apartheid rule just like her parents.
She added that she had been targeted by Stratcom, the apartheid government propaganda wing, just like her mother.
“She was a young woman trying to find her feet in relationships, trying to make friends, wanting love, boyfriends and a life.
“And she had the entire white male apparatus of the South African security police listening in on all her phone calls, privy to every detail of her life.
“Making offensive and obscene phone calls, breathing heavily,” Smith said.
Another touching tribute came from Duma Ndlovu, the brains behind the soapie Muvhango. Ndlovu recalled how between 1975 and 1977 he spent time at the Mandela home in Orlando West and got to know the family, including Zindzi.
“I was like part of the furniture. “I was an underground ANC operative reporting directly to Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and sometimes I had to stay at the house to help look after her and the daughters.
“Several times I visited Zindzi and Zenani in Swaziland where they were in school at Waterford with Fikile Magubane. I had slept in the house on May 16, 1977, when I woke up early to run an errand on one of the famous VW fun bugs that Mama Winnie used to send me around on.
“I left the house and came back around 8 or 9am. When I approached the Orlando West home there was a strange sight, there were police cars and policemen all over the place. Zindzi was perched on top of a lorry which had the household furniture on it.
“She saw me and quickly waved me away telling me to go away. I did. I knew there and then that there was trouble. I had no idea what kind.
“I was to later learn that Mama Winnie and her two daughters were being banished to Brandfort in the Free State. I would later that year leave the country for exile,” Ndlovu recalled.
Memorial services and funeral details were still not known at the time of publication.