President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet members on Monday led tributes for the late South African ambassador to Denmark and struggle icon, Zindzi (Zindziswa) Mandela.
Ramaphosa said Zindzi was a household name nationally and internationally, who during our years of struggle brought home the inhumanity of the apartheid system and the unshakeable resolve of the fight for freedom.
“After our liberation she became an icon of the task we began of transforming our society and stepping into spaces and opportunities that had been denied to generations of South Africans. Her spirit joins Tata Madiba and Mama Winnie in a reunion of leaders to whom we owe our freedom.”
The 59-year old Zindzi passed away at a Johannesburg hospital on Monday morning – just more than two years after her mother Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed away. Her father, Nelson Mandela passed away in 2013.
Educated in South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Zindzi spent many years involved in South Africa’s freedom struggle.
She rose to international prominence when she read out her father’s rejection of then-President PW Botha’s offer for freedom in 1985.
Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor said: “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.”
Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Lindiwe Sisulu said Zindzi was an icon in her own right.
“She actually had a very kind heart, an extraordinary combination of a very fierce fighter for liberation and a very soft heart,’ Sisulu said.
The EFF said Zindzi always spoke truth to power.
“She refused to simply be the daughter of Africa’s most powerful revolutionary and political couple. She took a political and revolutionary identity of her own,’ the EFF’s statement read.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation in a statement, said Zindzi will be remembered for a rich and extraordinary life, marked by many iconic moments.
“The years she spent banished with Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to the small town of Brandfort. That summer’s day in February 1985 at Jabulani Stadium when she read to the world Madiba’s rejection of President Botha’s offer of a conditional release from prison. Her own courageous work in underground structures,” read the statement.
