Zindzi Mandela, militant younger daughter of Nelson who became a diplomat – obituary

Zindzi Mandela, who has died aged 59, was the younger of Nelson Mandela’s two daughters by his second wife, Winnie; trained for war while her father was imprisoned on Robben Island, she found it difficult to accept his subsequent commitment to reconciliation.

She was born Zindziswa Mandela in the Soweto township on December 23 1960 and was 18 months old when her father was imprisoned in 1962. She was 15 when she next saw him, on a prison visit. Brought up by her mother Winnie, she was subjected along with her family to a campaign of persecution by the South African security forces.

When Zindzi was five, friends paid for she and her older sister Zenani to attend a boarding school in Swaziland. “The police would find out when the school was closing for holidays and arrest our mother,” Zindzi recalled. “We returned to an empty house so often I lost count.”

In 1976, when Zindzi was 15, she and her mother were exiled to the Orange Free State. where she became involved in the resistance movement, learning to strip an AK-47 in 38 seconds: “It was brutal, we were preparing for warfare.”

In the early 1980s the two women returned to Soweto, and Zindzi read Law at the University of Cape Town, rising to prominence in 1985 when her father was offered a conditional pardon by white minority president PW Botha if he denounced violence by the ANC, and he asked her to read out his rejection speech.

In Soweto, however, Winnie and Zindzi were gaining a fearsome reputation, with their security detail beating and, on occasion, killing those who threatened Winnie’s supremacy. Their personal lives were also messy: Winnie took lovers; Zindzi, after a nervous breakdown, had four children by four different men. One was Clayton Sithole, an ANC militant who took his own life in prison. On the day her father was released in February 1990, she was attending Sithole’s funeral.

Zindzi was horrified by her father’s commitment to reconciliation. “We didn’t understand Dad at all; we weren’t mentally or emotionally prepared for peace,” she recalled. Nor was she prepared for his traditional views on his paternal role: “He tried to insist I live with him ‘until some fine man comes along’. Yet I was a mother of three. I was feeding my baby at the time and he insisted I wean him on to formula so that he could feed him. Actually, I was very touched by that.”

As the rifts between her parents deepened, Zindzi took her mother’s side, and for a couple of years did not speak to her father. But they gradually grew closer and she came to accept his commitment to peace, though she admitted that it was ANC discipline rather than his arguments than brought her into line.

She was philosophical when her parents divorced in 1996, and became fond of her new stepmother, Graca Machel. But she remained loyal above all to her mother: “Realistically we wouldn’t have had Madiba in shining lights if it had not been for my mother,” she told The Sunday Times in 2018. “Not only did she keep my father’s name alive, she kept the ANC relevant. She was a single mother, who endured harassment, imprisonment and banishment.”

Over the years Zindzi Mandela worked as a lawyer and in sports marketing, and in 2015 was appointed South Africa’s ambassador to Denmark. Last year she was censured by the South African foreign ministry after tweeting the message: “Dear Apartheid Apologists, your time is over. You will not rule again. We do not fear you. Finally #TheLandIsOurs.”

Zindzi Mandela was married twice, secondly to Molapo Motlhajwa. He and her four children survive her.

Zindzi Mandela, born December 23 1960, died July 13 2020