Mandela’s Alleged Daughter Gets a Response

Mpho Pule, a 63-year-old bakery worker in Bloemfontein, South Africa, was told after her mother’s passing by her grandmother that she was Nelson Mandela’s child. After 12 years of trying in vain to meet Mandela, and shortly after her own death from a stroke, it looks like her children might finally get to meet their purported grandfather. It took years of mailing letters to various offices of the Nelson Mandela Foundation before Pule got any response at all, and even then it was only to begin a lengthy and halting bureaucratic dance, detailed by the Mail & Guardian. In fact, the process seemed to have hit a dead end and resumed only because Pule’s friend Martin McKenzie, against the Foundation’s wishes, publicized Pule’s story. Now it seems that the process of arranging a meeting between the two families is finally out of the hands of the Foundation and in those of Zindzi Mandela.