Mandela’s granddaughter bares her past in book
Print Edition
Nelson Mandela’s family is no stranger to the public eye — its successes and trials have been aired for decades in films, books and the news media.
Granddaughter Zoleka Mandela’s story, perhaps, is the one that no one saw coming.
The 33-year-old launched a book in South Africa yesterday, “When Hope Whispers,” that recounts her family’s involvement in the fight against South Africa’s white apartheid regime, her struggles with alcohol and drug addiction, the loss of two of her children and her fight against breast cancer.
The book’s publication comes as Nelson Mandela, 95, is in critical but stable condition, under intensive medical care at his Johannesburg home, after being discharged in September from a lengthy hospitalization.
Through her detailed accounts, Zoleka said she hopes to inspire women going through chemotherapy, addicts looking for silver linings and parents struggling with the loss of their children.
Zoleka’s childhood was anything but ordinary.
“By the time I was born, on 9 April 1980, my mother knew how to strip and assemble an AK-47 in exactly thirty-eight seconds. She was twenty years old, trained in guerrilla warfare and already a full-fledged member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (the armed wing of the African National Congress),” says the book’s opening line, describing her mother’s participation in struggle against apartheid.
Before she was a year old, her grandmother, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, had already smuggled her into Robben Island prison so her grandfather could see her. Zoleka recounts a story told by her mother and grandmother of a time they said she helped her grandmother by hiding a hand grenade in her school bag, where police didn’t look, though she still saw her grandmother arrested.
Her childhood brashness turned to teen rebellion when she abused alcohol and drugs. She writes of hiding drugs in her bra, smoking marijuana, drinking too much alcohol, doing lines of cocaine daily and the relationships that fueled her drug use and the suicidal thoughts that haunted her.
The book reveals that Zoleka was hospitalized after a suicide attempt in June 2010 when her 13-year-old daughter Zenani died in a car crash.
“I hadn’t seen my daughter for 10 days before her passing, and I hadn’t because I chose to use drugs. That’s obviously a reminder that I chose my addiction over my kids and I have to live with that for the rest of my life,” she said with a heavy sigh.
She lost another child days after he was born prematurely in 2011. Zoleka has one son, Zwelami, 10.
Following successful rehab, Zoleka now glows in sobriety.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
