Nelson Mandela\u2019s long-serving personal assistant has described the \u201cchaos\u201d around his funeral and bickering over his legacy in a hard-hitting memoir.<\/p>\n
Zelda la Grange, who was Mandela\u2019s assistant for almost 20 years, paints a picture of ANC politicians and his family clamouring to use Mandela for their own ends as he lay dying and during his funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had never experienced such chaos,\u201d she wrote of Mandela\u2019s memorial service, laying in state and funeral, saying that plans were changed every few minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one really knew who was in charge. One could not help but wonder whether it was just eight years of bad planning, wasting money on foreign travel to consult with other countries about events of this magnitude, or whether it was a deliberate attempt to exclude from Mandela\u2019s funeral people who were not allied with the right people.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Grange also describes suspicions that her phone and that of others close to Mandela were tapped by South Africa security agencies, which may have also placed two agents on Mandela\u2019s medical team.<\/span><\/p>\n Mandela\u2019s daughter Zindzi as well as\u00a0Mandela\u2019s eldest grandson support La Grange.<\/p>\n Mandla Mandela said \u201cI think, my grandfather is definitely at this hour \u2026looking down with a big smile.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the guests at the book launch\u00a0were Mandela\u2019s former anti-apartheid struggle comrades \u2014 the frail and ageing George Bizos and jail-mate Ahmed Kathrada.<\/p>\n Nobel laureate and retired archbishop Desmond Tutu said\u00a0La Grange\u2019s \u201cutter devotion to Madiba was so, so obvious to anyone who beheld it. It was a very heartwarming thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Source: The Citizen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nelson Mandela\u2019s long-serving personal assistant has described the \u201cchaos\u201d around his funeral and bickering over his legacy in a hard-hitting memoir. Zelda la Grange, who was Mandela\u2019s assistant for almost 20 years, paints a picture of ANC politicians and his family clamouring to use Mandela for their own ends as he lay dying and during … Continue reading “Mandela’s funeral: Complete chaos, bad planning, wasted money”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1510,1514,327,9242],"class_list":["post-14363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-chaos","tag-funeral","tag-mandela","tag-zelda-la-grange"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14364,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions\/14364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}