For Mrs. Winnie Madikizela Mandela, the struggle is over and the light has gone off. Yet she will never be forgotten for her actions and with her life, she etched her name in the hallowed hall of fame. Our Assistant Editor, CHINWE MADUAGWU, reports.
“I am a product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.” – Winnie Mandela
A life of struggle, a life filled with ups and downs, a life of highs and lows but a life fully lived. A life she may not have asked for had she any choice. A life that was thrust upon her by circumstances yet she met it head on. A difficult life but courageously lived; truly a product of the times.
For Mrs. Winnie Madikizela Mandela, the light has finally gone off. The struggle is over, be it the struggle for equal rights or the struggle over ill health, the battle is over. She has gone to her rest, having fought many battles during her lifetime.
Many would contest the character of the late freedom fighter, and former wife of South Africa’s freedom fighter and first black president, Nelson Mandela, but one thing that no one can take away from her is the fact that South Africa’s history and the struggle against apartheid can never be complete without her getting a mention. Good or bad, Winnie Mandela, as she was popularly known played a major role in bringing an end to the reign of apartheid in South Africa.
Born Nomzamo (meaning the one who tried) Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela on September 26, 1936, as the fourth of seven children, Winnie grew up without her mother who passed on when she was nine years. Though her mother’s death disrupted her family’s life, and posed challenges to her future, she didn’t see the challenges as something that could not be surmounted.
She went ahead to study Social Work at Jan Hofmeyer School of Social Work and earned her degree in 1956. Years later, she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Witwatersrand.
Her part was to cross with lawyer and activist, Nelson Mandela in 1957. She was standing at a bus stop when Mandela first set eyes on her. Whether it was destiny or being at the wrong place at the wrong time, that chance meeting changed the trajectory of Winnie’s life.
She got married to Mandela in 1957 at the age of 22 and they had two children in quick succession.
Perhaps they knew that their time together would be cut short. In 1963, six years after their marriage, Mandela was arrested and subsequently jailed for his anti apartheid activities. This left young Winnie to raise their two young children aged four and three years respectively all by herself. And like Elisha she also inherited her masters mantle and became the voice and face of the fight against the apartheid regime.
Nelson Mandela it was who said; “Where you stand depends on where you sit,” and how aptly that statement captured the position and actions of Winnie in the years that followed.
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She was sitting on a hot seat, left to carry on from where her husband had stopped. The shoes she was expected to wear were indeed big and she wore and walked with them the best she could.
Yes, in later years, she may have taken decisions and actions that were to tarnish her image and diminish her contributions to the emancipation of black South Africans, the fact remains that she got going when the going got tough.
After her husband’s arrest and detention, she was quoted as saying; “They think because they have put my husband on an Island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become.” And indeed she put her husband’s plight, and the activities of the regime on world focus.
It was not an easy period for Winnie as she was at different times tortured, subjected to house arrest and kept under surveillance. She was held in solitary confinement for over a year and was exiled to the town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State where she operated from except when she was allowed to visit her husband at Robben Island.
Winnie was undeterred. She actively campaigned for equal rights and in 1985 she won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award along with her fellow activists Allan Boesak and Beyers Nandi for their “human rights” works in South Africa. In 1988, she received a Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. She was known and largely referred to as the “Mother of the Nation” by her supporters. She rose in the hierarchy of the African National Congress (ANC), to head the women’s league.
While Mrs. Mandela never told anybody that she was a saint and nobody expected her to be; there are always rules of engagement in any and every conflict. Whether she got carried away by the perceived successes of her exploits or she was simply following the principle of ‘an eye for an eye,’ the 80s heralded the ugly and brutal side of the ‘gentle’ activist. By commission and omission, she endorsed violence and set the stage for her eventual downfall.
On April 30, 1986, at Munsieville, she was said to have endorsed the practice of ‘necklacing’ (burning people alive using tyres and petrol). She was quoted as saying, “Together, hand in hand, with our matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.” Her romance with violence didn’t end with the verbal endorsement. She was also accused of kidnap and murder using members of the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC), which acted as her personal security details.
Specifically, her bodyguard and coach of the Football Club, Jerry Musivuzi Richardson, was said to have on December 29, 1988, on her orders abducted 14 year old James Seipei (known also as Stompie Moeketsi) and three other youngsters from the house of a Methodist Minister, Rev. Paul Veriyn, claiming they were being sexually abused by the minister. The boys were said to have been beaten to get confessions of sexual relations with the minister. Seipei was accused of being an informant and his body was later found in a field with stab wounds to the throat on January 6, 1989.
The release of her husband Nelson Mandela in 1990 after 27 years of imprisonment did not bring much sweetness back to Winnie’s life. They separated in 1992, while Mandela was President and Winnie First Lady. In 1996, they formally divorced.
Winnie went through a lot of travails. She faced a number of criminal trials and also appeared before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by her husband.
Though she served in the post apartheid government of the ANC, she was sacked from office following allegations of corruption.
In 1991, an appeal court acquitted her of all charges except that of kidnapping in the Seipei case and her six-year-jail sentence was reduced to a fine. In 1992, she was again accused of being behind the killing of Dr. Abu – Barker Asvat, a friend who had examined Seipei at her house after he had been abducted but before he was killed . She was said to have paid an equivalent of 8,000 dollars and supplied the firearm used in his killing on January 27, 1989.
Appearing before the Truth Commission in 1997, Winnie Mandela, admitted that “things went horribly wrong.” And the final report of the Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu issued in 1998 read concerning her, “Ms Winnie Madikizela Mandela politically and morally accounted for gross violations of human rights committed by the MUFC and she was responsible, by omission, for the commission of gross violations of human rights.”
On April 24, 2003, Winnie was again convicted on 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft and her broker Addy Moolman was convicted on 58 counts of fraud and 25 of theft. Both pleaded not guilty.
The charges related to money taken from loan applicants account for funeral fund, but from which applicants did not benefit . She was sentenced to five years in prison. Shortly after the conviction, she resigned from all leadership posts in the ANC, including her parliamentary seat and the president of ANC Women League.
In 2004, an appeal judge ruled that “the crimes were not committed for personal gain” and over-turned the conviction for theft but upheld that of fraud handing her a three and half years suspended sentence.
In June 2007, the Canadian High Commission in South Africa refused her visa to travel to Toronto, Canada, for a gala fundraising concert organised by an art organisation MusicaNoir which included world premiere of The Passion of Winnie, an opera based on her life.
In death as in life, Winnie Mandela represented different things for different people. Reacting to her death, South African President, Mr. Ramaphosa said it was a national loss of a “mother, a grandmother, a friend, a comrade, a leader and an icon,” while Archbishop Desmond Tutu called her “a defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid.”
In a tweet, Rev Jesse Jackson said of Winnie; “In the darkest hour of the struggle to free South Africa, with Nelson Mandela in prison, the face of hope and courage was Winnie Mandela.” But to Reuters, she was “a ruthless ideologue prepared to sacrifice laws and lives in pursuit of revolution and redress.”
Whatever anyone may say, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, contributed to the world history and in no small way. She has earned her place in the hallowed hall of fame. As her name Nomzamo says, she tried.
She died on April 2, 2018.
Goodnight brave one. Peace!!
