The government has come under fire from a Mandela family member and a close friend of the late Zindzi Mandela after it emerged that she was due to be deployed to Liberia.
The relative and friend said they regarded her posting to Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, as punishment for her controversial tweets on land reform in SA last year, which some in the government claimed had brought the country into disrepute.
At the time of the tweets, Mandela was based in Copenhagen as SA’s ambassador to Denmark, a position she occupied until the end of her four-year term in December last year.
But the department of international relations has poured cold water on the controversy, saying Mandela had accepted her new posting to the West African nation but her move had been interrupted by the outbreak of Covid-19.
Ndileka Mandela, a niece to Mandela, yesterday told the Sunday Times she did not agree with the posting of her aunt to Liberia, as it was not a safe country.
“I just pulled the crime stats in Liberia. Now to post Aunt Zindzi, who grew up in the brutality of apartheid, into that space would have been very unfair and for me would seem like it was punishment for her statement on land [reform] when she was in Denmark. Perhaps a person might say she would be protected behind the walls of the embassy but that does not protect against the toxicity around you – we’re all affected by our environments,” she said.
Mandela was laid to rest on Friday following her passing on Monday.
Christian Smit, who said he had been a close friend of Mandela’s for more than three decades, claimed that deploying her to Liberia amounted to nothing but a demotion as the position came with less prestige and would not have allowed her to further develop her career in the diplomatic world.
“If it couldn’t be London or Washington DC then at least Stockholm, where a lot of people were in exile. But to offer her Monrovia?”
“Outside the Washington embassy there’s a colossal statue of her father with a fist in the air. Why not put her there? Why in a meaningless post where she’s not going to shine, where people are not going to see her?
“She needed to shine. God bless the Liberian government, but to now hide her in Liberia instead of a showcase position was a humiliation in my book.”
Smit said he also viewed the Monrovia posting as Mandela’s punishment for expressing her views on land reform on Twitter. She wrote in a tweet: “Whilst I wine and dine here … wondering how the world of shivering land thieves is doing.”
Smit said he would be writing to international relations minister Naledi Pandor to complain about the matter.
But Pandor’s spokesperson, Lunga Nqengelele, said they were stunned by the criticism as Mandela had accepted her latest diplomatic job.