Zindzi Mandela was “a courageous political activist” committed to the fight against apartheid. The cause of her death has not been revealed.
Zindzi Mandela, the youngest daughter of the first black South African president Nelson Mandela, involved in the fight against apartheid, died Monday, at the age of 59, in a hospital in Johannesburg.
The causes of her death have not been released.
In a statement, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his “sincere condolences to the Mandela family”, saying he was “deeply saddened by the death of (…) Zindziswa ‘Zindzi’ Nobutho Mandela “.
The head of state paid tribute to “a courageous political activist”, who notably participated, like her father, in the armed branch of the African National Congress (ANC), spearhead of the fight against the regime of the apartheid, officially fell in 1994.
“Zindzi Mandela was very well known in the country and in the world. During our years of combat, she raised awareness of the inhumanity of the apartheid system and of the unwavering determination of our fight for freedom,” said Cyril Ramaphosa, member of the ANC, the party in power since 1994.
In 1985, in front of a packed stadium in the township of Soweto, a center of resistance to the racist regime, young Zindzi had read a speech from her father, then in prison, in which he rejected the proposal of the president of the time PW Botha release him on condition that he renounces demonstrations and violence against apartheid.
With this “act of heroism”, she entered “the hearts of many brave young people who continued to make the country ungovernable,” said the ANC parliamentary group in a statement.
Zindzi Mandela was the youngest daughter of Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and first black South African president (1994–1999), and of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the popular but controversial face of the fight against apartheid.
She grew up in the absence of her father, arrested in 1962, two years after her birth, and released in 1990.
With the death of Zindzi Mandela, South Africa loses “those many consider a child of the nation,” said former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and close friend of Nelson Mandela.