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Zindzi Mandela, South Africa’s Ambassador to Denmark and daughter of South Africa’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela, has died, CNN reports.
“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,” Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations, said in a statement Monday.
A cause of death has not been revealed; however, it was announced that she passed away early Monday morning at a hospital in Johannesburg. Mandela was 59 years old at her time of death.
“Ambassador Mandela passed away in the early hours of today, 13 July 2020, in a Johannesburg hospital,” President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Monday. “Our sadness is compounded by this loss being visited upon us just days before the world marks the birthday of the great Nelson Mandela.”
Mandela grew up amidst the anti-apartheid struggle. During her father’s 27-year imprisonment, she and her family endured years of harassment at the hands of the apartheid regime. Mandela was the anti-apartheid revolutionary’s youngest daughter.
One of Mandela’s most noteworthy moments was in 1985 when she stood in front of a large crowd and read a letter in which her father rejected an conditional release offer from apartheid president P.W. Botha as the terms of the release required her father to renounce anti-apartheid protests.
In 2013, Mandela praised the portrayal of her father’s journey in the film, Long Walk Home.
“What I liked about the Long Walk to Freedom is that it talks to my father as a boy who grew up in an African Village and the impact that he had in the international sphere on the global level,” she told Madame Noire at the 2013 South South Awards.
We send our deepest condolences to the Mandela family.
