President Cyril Ramaphosa has thanked the Mandela family for disclosing that their late daughter, Zindzi, had tested positive for the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Ramaphosa said the disclosure was an important gesture and would help social acceptance of those who were infected and help fight stigma.
“Just yesterday we received the news that Zindzi too had tested positive for the virus. I would like to thank the Mandela family for the very important gesture of sharing this information with the nation,” he said.
“This gesture is a final act of solidarity in the life of a woman who devoted her life to the cause of her fellow South Africans,” he added.
Ramaphosa was speaking during a virtual memorial service of the late Ambassador to Denmark, who died at a Johannesburg hospital on Monday morning.
On Wednesday, Zindzi’s son, Zondwa, revealed to the SABC that her mother, 59, had tested positive for Coronavirus.
Ramaphosa said Zindzi, the youngest daughter of global Struggle icons Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela Mandela, was a devoted activist, a patriot and a fearless freedom fighter whose life was committed to the liberation of the country.
He said Zindzi had stood with her mother and sister, Zenani, to keep the memory of former president Mandela, during the long and dark days of his imprisonment on Robben Island.
He also reminded the country of Zindzi’s reading of her father’s letter at the Jabulani Amphitheatre in 1985, in which the late former statesman rejected former Apartheid president PW Botha’s conditional offer to release Mandela.
“She was a fearless activist and a leader in her own right. She served as the deputy president of the Soweto Youth Congress and was a member of the Release Mandela Campaign,” he said.
“She was recruited as an underground operative of Umkhonto we Sizwe, and worked with the communities of Weilers and Orange Farm to launch the first ANC branch with Isithwalandwe Walter Sisulu in the 1990s,” he added.
Zindzi will be buried tomorrow morning.
