Keeping up with the Mandelas? Mandela Family Values? The Real Housewives of Johannesburg?
These are all compelling suggestions for naming a reality show starring Nelson Mandela’s three granddaughters, but the young women and their producers have settled on Being Mandela as the title.
The show, which hopes to portray the Mandela girls as the anti-Kardashians, highlights the lives of the young women as they break away from their grandfather’s legacy to start building their own, each woman independent and ambitious.
Dorothy Adjoa Amuah, 27, has a law degree, as well as an MBA, and is in the luxury brands business; Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, 34, is the mother of a 10-year-old son, a two-year-old daughter and a third child due in January. She is involved in a family business, Mandela Dlamini Associates, and plans to launch a clothing line, and Swati Dlamini, 32, is a single mother getting back into the career world with plans to set up a foundation focused on the housing, education and medical sectors.
The show is set to air in South Africa in early 2012 and then across Africa next year. While no US broadcaster has been secured yet, the show’s American producing partner, Rick Leed, is pitching it to USA Networks as well as “all top-tier cable players,” hoping to strike a deal.
