Zelda La Grange was born in Pretoria

Pretoria

Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 on October 29, 1970. From 1994 until 1996, she served as a typist for Mary Mxadana, the private secretary to Nelson Mandela, the newly elected post-Apartheid President of South Africa. In 1996, she was promoted to assistant private secretary, and in 1999 she was again promoted to become private secretary to the Office of the President. Later in 1999, after Mandela left office, she was appointed as the executive personal assistant and spokesperson for the Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...

 Foundation in Johannesburg

Johannesburg

Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...

.

Personal life

Her father was a South African Breweries executive who later ran his own butchery; her mother was a teacher. They voted reflexively for the ruling National Party, apartheid's inventors, and on Sundays they attended religious services at the local Dutch Reformed Church, after which they swam in the family pool.

Working with Nelson Mandela

Zelda has been his secretary, butler, aide-de-camp, spokesperson, travelling companion, confidante and - as she put it, and he agrees - honorary granddaughter, growing ever closer to him from the day she began work as an anonymous typist in the presidential office in 1994.

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