As a small boy, Zondwa Mandela regularly visited his grandfather Nelson Mandela and grew close to the legendary leader of the anti-apartheid struggle. After Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, he would often interrupt his paperwork to conduct impromptu exercise sessions and dispense advice to his young grandson.
“We would do press-ups … and he would do them on two fingers, he was a very strong man.” laughs Zondwa Mandela, who is the son of Nelson Mandela’s youngest daughter. “The big key, he used to say, was education and that you always needed to remain grounded. But the lesson I always learned from him is that everything is possible.”
Two decades on, Zondwa Mandela, who is now 25, is putting his grandfather’s counsel to the test as he sets his sights on a business career. Together with another man with a prominent political name, Khulubuse Zuma, the 39-year-old nephew of South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma, Zondwa Mandela has launched an ambitious venture that will invest in African emerging markets.
“We want to find something, improve it, and expand on it. But we want to do something for Africa and empower its people,” says Zondwa Mandela. His language clearly seeks to echo the idealism that led his grandfather to sacrifice the best years of his life to the fight against apartheid.
His new venture still has much to prove if it is to be seen as a serious business and not an instance of two scions of prominent families trading on their famous names.
The business will certainly have a rather easier ride than his grandfather faced in his youth. The pair are well placed to benefit from controversial black empowerment policies, under which, since 1994, large chunks of corporate South Africa have been transferred to black owners. Read the rest of this entry »
