Nelson Mandela’s Granddaughter Applauds Harry And Meghan For Invoking Grandfather’s Legacy—And Says Criticism Was Misquoted

Netflix said the series was “inspired by Nelson Mandela,” and shortly after it was released the Australian quoted Ndileka Mandela saying people “have used” her grandfather’s “legacy because they know his name sells—Harry and Meghan are no different from them,” adding Harry “needs to be authentic and stick to his own story. . . . What relevance does grandad’s life have with his?”

However, in an essay published Saturday in The Independent, Mandela said she never claimed Harry and Meghan were “‘profiteering’ from my grandfather’s name,” and the people who actually did this were the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s “critics, who falsely exploited my grandfather’s name to attack them.”

Mandela said she is “mortified” to see how her comments to the Australian—a large Rupert Murdoch-controlled paper—about “my genuine concerns about the commercial exploitation of my grandfather’s legacy” were twisted, and how they were “misused to attack a woman of colour who was, effectively, hounded out of the British royal family.”

Mandela wrote the same people who “impugn Harry and Meghan want to silence the rest of us who are still fighting for the values my grandfather stood for,” namely those who do not acknowledge Britain’s role in the Atlantic slave trade and other “atrocities,” and those who believe the realities of institutional racism shouldn’t be taught in schools.

Mandela said that ripples of colonialism and the apartheid still linger in South Africa, and the British royal family still benefits from “exploitative structures” and laws that allow them to conceal the scope of their wealth.

The Sussexes “are widening the boundaries of acceptable discourse, bringing to light the unsavoury realities of a cherished British institution that remains at the heart of racialised global inequalities,” Mandela wrote.

Forbes has reached out to News Corp Australia for comment.