Not a single one of us is immune from family politics. When you are as publicly beloved and politically iconic as Madiba, these politics take on a whole new level of intensity. Zelda Le Grange, personal assistant to the beloved father of the nation, has written a memoir to be published this week.

Le Grange is reported not to have held back any of the feuds or mistreatment surrounding the illness and death of Tata, revealing how badly parts of the family often treated Graça Machel.

The book reveals that factions in Mandela’s family used the dying statesman’s inability to express his wishes to “step in and start controlling matters to their advantage”.

These actions included banning some of his favourite people from visiting him during his last months and bringing strangers to meet him when he was too ill to express his wishes. His beloved wife was also repeatedly sidelined from certain key decisions concerning his legacy and wellbeing.

In one of the chapters, La Grange writes that at one point a frail Mandela was moved to Qunu – far from friends and medical attention – at the insistence of a faction in the family, and certain family members did not want La Grange to travel to see him, even though he was lonely and received few visitors.

La Grange says Machel was “the only person who really made him happy”, although another anecdote illustrates the friction Machel had to endure as a member of the Mandela family.

This book promises to be making headlines for quite some time if it is as revealing and controversial as it promises to be.

Definitely worth a read. It will be very interesting to see who is exposed and how the various factions of the Mandela family respond.

[source: Times Live]