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Nelson Mandela’s eldest granddaughter blasted an Australian newspaper after she accused Prince Harry and Meghan Markle of ‘profiteering’ from her family’s legacy to promote their Netflix documentary.
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Earlier this month, Ndileka Mandela made headlines when Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported she had slammed the royal couple for having ‘stolen’ her grandfather’s name for their own personal gain.
Danielle Gusmaroli, the newspaper’s Europe correspondent, quoted the social activist as being ‘deeply upset’ the Sussexes had used the late South African president’s quotes in their documentary series Live To Lead.
Ms. Mandela was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying she admired Prince Harry for having the confidence to break away from The Firm but was ‘deeply upset’ he and Meghan were using her grandfather’s legacy.
‘I don’t believe he nor Meghan have ever properly met granddad, maybe when Harry was young at Buckingham Palace, but they are using his quotations in the documentary to draw in people and make millions without the Mandela family benefiting,’ Ms Mandela was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
‘I know the Nelson Mandela Foundation has supported the initiative but people have stolen grandfather’s quotes for years and have used his legacy because they know his name sells – Harry and Meghan are no different from them.’
‘But it comes at a price, you have to then fund your own life, I’ve made peace with people using granddad’s name but it’s still deeply upsetting and tedious every time it happens.’
In response to the quotes being published, Ms. Mandela insisted she ‘honestly doesn’t find anything wrong with them (the Sussexes) using that opening thing inspirational with a quote of granddad’ – and accused the couple’s critics of ‘making a mountain out of a mole hill… for no reason’.
‘Meghan has always been an activist, and this is in her activism work which my grandfather was, he was, a social justice activist through and through,’ she told Fox News earlier this month.
‘Like I said early on, a lot of people use granddad’s quotes, and nobody has been made such a big rah-rah as they are making out of Harry and Meghan using this quotation.’
In an opinion piece for the London newspaper The Independent on Sunday, Ms. Mandela blasted the newspaper for ‘weaponising my name’.
She said her grandfather’s reputation had been used to attack a woman of colour.
She insisted she had never accused Harry and Meghan of ‘profiteering’ from her grandfather’s name and was ‘shocked’ by the claims.
‘(Meghan and Harry’s) critics … falsely exploited my grandfather’s name to attack them.
The words wrongly attributed to me, criticising them for quoting my grandfather, are not mine at all – they belong not to me, but to those who have amplified these falsehoods all over the world.
‘I am mortified to have seen how my words were twisted in such a way as to distort my genuine concerns about the commercial exploitation of my grandfather’s legacy.’
