“Zindzi will not only be remembered as the daughter of our fighting heroes, Tata Nelson and Mama Winnie Mandela, but as a fighting hero in her own right. She served South Africa well,” Naledi Pandor, Minister for International Relations, said in a statement. brief statement on Monday morning.
The department said it was still collecting information on Mandela’s cause of death and hopes to publish a detailed statement later.
Mandela, who was the youngest daughter of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, died early Monday morning at a Johannesburg hospital, according to a statement from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office.
The prime minister is “deeply saddened” by his death, according to the statement.
“I offer my deepest condolences to the Mandela family as we mourn the passing of a courageous political activist who was a leader in her own right,” Ramaphosa said in the statement.
“Our sadness is compounded by this loss that was visited on us a few days before the world marks the birthday of the great Nelson Mandela.”
The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation also issued a statement mourning the death of Mandela.
She was “considered by many to be a child of the nation,” the foundation said in a statement, and her death means that “South Africa loses an important generational link that connects our divided history with the promise of a better and more inclusive future.”
A spokesperson for the Nelson Mandela Foundation told CNN that it is currently consulting with the Mandela family before issuing its own statement.
The foundation previously published that on the same day in 1969, Nelson Mandela’s eldest son, Madiba Thembekile Mandela, died in a car accident.
A third brother, Zenani Mandela-Dlamini, currently serves as South Africa’s ambassador to South Korea.
Nelson Mandela died in 2013 at the age of 95 years.
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