Ramaphosa lauds Mandela family for disclosing Zindzi’s Covid-19 infection
President Cyril Ramaphosa has thanked the Mandela family for disclosing the fact that Zindzi Mandela tested positive for Covid-19 shortly before her death.
The youngest daughter of anti-apartheid icons Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed away at the age of 59 on Monday.
Ramaphosa paid tribute Zindzi during a virtual memorial service hosted by the ANC Women's League on Thursday evening.
Ramaphosa said the knowledge that Zindzi had recently tested positive for Covid-19 will help deal with the stigma associated with the virus.
"Just yesterday we received the news that Zindzi, too, had tested positive for the virus.
"I would like to thank the Mandela family for the very important gesture of sharing this information with the nation.
“This is a virus that affects us all and there should never be any stigma around people who become infected. In doing so, you're helping to encourage social acceptance for sufferers.”
He added: “At such a time, what we need most in our lives is to show love and to show care. This gesture is the final act of solidarity in the life of a woman who devoted her life to the cause of her fellow South Africans.”
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Ramaphosa said a life activism was never really a choice for Zindzi.
She was brought up seeing both her parents incarcerated and sent into exile.
"Hers was a childhood lived under the harshest of conditions, as the apartheid regime intensified its repressive laws in a bid to break the fighting spirit of our people,” said Ramaphosa.
“She was just over a year old when her father was arrested, and witnessed her mother being harassed and intimidated by the apartheid police."
Ramaphosa recalled the defiant manner in which she read out her father’s letter at a rally in Soweto in 1985, i which he rejected an offer of conditional release by then president PW Botha.
“It was at this very moment that Zindzi's courage, bravery and leadership talents were displayed for all to see,” he said.
“She captured the hearts and the minds of all freedom-loving South Africans as the message was broadcast to the world. Through her reading of Madiba's letter, the articulation and her defiant posture ignited the people of our country."
Zindzi is due to be laid to rest next to her mother in Fourways on Friday, on the eve of her father’s birthday.