Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, (born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela; 26 September 1936 – 2 April 2018), also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003, and from 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation".
Born to a Mpondo family in Bizana, and a qualified social worker, Madikizela-Mandela married anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in 1958; they remained married for 38 years and had two children together. In 1963, after Mandela was imprisoned following the Rivonia Trial; she became his public face during the 27 years he spent in jail. During that period, she rose to prominence within the domestic anti-apartheid movement. She was detained by apartheid state security services on various occasions, tortured subjected to banning orders, banished to a rural town, and spent several months in solitary confinement.
In the mid-1980s Madikizela-Mandela was accused of exerting a "reign of terror", and was "at the centre of an orgy of violence". in Soweto, which led to condemnation by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and a rebuke by the ANC in exile. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established by Nelson Mandela's government to investigate human rights abuses found Madikizela-Mandela to have been "politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the "Mandela United Football Club", her security detail. Madikizela-Mandela was accused of endorsing the necklacing of alleged police informers and apartheid government collaborators, and individuals within her security detail carried out the kidnapping, torture, and murder of such individuals, most notoriously of 14-year-old Stompie Sepei.
Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990, and the couple separated in 1992; their divorce was finalised in March 1996. She visited him during his final illness. As a senior ANC figure, she took part in the post-apartheid ANC government, although she was dismissed from her post amid allegations of corruption. In 2003, she was convicted of theft and fraud. She temporarily withdrew from active politics before returning several years later.
Early life
Madikizela-Mandela's Xhosa name was Nomzamo ("She who tries"). She was born in the village of Mbongweni, Bizana, Pondoland, in what is now the Eastern Cape province. She was the fourth of eight children, seven sisters and a brother. Her parents, Columbus and Gertrude, who had a white father, and Xhosa mother, were both teachers. Columbus was a history teacher and a headmaster, and Gertrude was a domestic science teacher. Gertrude died when Winnie was nine years old, resulting in the break-up of her family when the siblings were sent to live with different relatives. Madikizela-Mandela went on to become the head girl at her high school in Bizana.
Upon leaving school, she went to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School, despite restrictions on the education of blacks during the apartheid era. She earned a degree in social work in 1956, and several years later earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand. She held a number of jobs in various parts of what was then the Bantustan of Transkei; including with the Transkei government, living at various points of time at Bizana, Shawbury and Johannesburg. Her first job was as a social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.
Marriage to Nelson Mandela
She met the lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in 1957, when he was still married to Evelyn Mase.
She was 22 years old and standing at a bus stop in Soweto when Mandela first saw her and charmed her, securing a lunch date the following week. The couple married in 1958 and had two daughters, Zenani (born 1958) and Zindziwa (born 1960). Mandela was arrested and jailed in 1963, and was not released until 1990.
The couple separated in 1992. They finalised their divorce in March 1996 with an unspecified out-of-court settlement. During the divorce hearing, Nelson Mandela rejected Madikizela-Mandela's assertion that arbitration could salvage the marriage, and cited her infidelity as a cause of the divorce, saying "... I am determined to get rid of the marriage". Her attempt to obtain a settlement up to US$5million (R70 million) — half of what she claimed her ex-husband was worth — was dismissed when she failed to appear in court for a settlement hearing.
When asked in a 1994 interview about the possibility of reconciliation, she said: "I am not fighting to be the country's First Lady. In fact, I am not the sort of person to carry beautiful flowers and be an ornament to everyone.
Madikizela-Mandela was involved in a lawsuit at the time of her death, claiming that she was entitled to Mandela's homestead in Qunu, through customary law, despite her divorce from Nelson Mandela in 1996. Her case was dismissed by the Mthatha High Court in 2016, and she was reportedly preparing to appeal to the Constitutional Court at the time of her death, after failing at the Supreme Court of Appeal in January 2018.
Apartheid
Due to her political activities, Winnie was regularly detained by the National Party government. She was tortured, subjected to house arrest, kept under surveillance, held in solitary confinement for over a year and even banished to a remote town. She emerged as a leading opponent of apartheid during the later years of her husband's imprisonment (August 1963 – February 1990). For many of those years, she was exiled to the town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State and confined to the area, except for when she was allowed to visit her husband at Robben Island. Beginning in 1969, she spent eighteen months in solitary confinement at Pretoria Central Prison. It was at this time that Winnie Mandela became well known in the Western world. She organised local clinics, campaigned actively for equal rights and was promoted by the ANC as a symbol of their struggle against apartheid.
In a leaked letter to Jacob Zuma in October 2008, outgoing President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki alluded to the role the ANC had created for her in their anti-apartheid activism:
In the context of the global struggle for the release of political prisoners in our country, our movement took a deliberate decision to profile Nelson Mandela as the representative personality of these prisoners, and therefore to use his personal political biography, including the persecution of his then wife, Winnie Mandela, dramatically to present to the world and the South African community the brutality of the apartheid system.
Beaten by the apartheid police, she developed an addiction to painkillers and alcohol as a result of a back injury caused by the assault.
Violence and criminal proceedings
During a speech in Munsieville on 13 April 1986, Winnie Mandela endorsed the practice of necklacing (burning people alive using tyres and petrol) by saying: "With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country." Further tarnishing her reputation were accusations by her bodyguard, Jerry Musivuzi Richardson, and others, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that she had ordered kidnapping and murder during the mid-1980's.
In 1988, her home was burned by residents of Soweto, as retaliation for the actions of the Mandela United Football Club, which acted as Mrs. Mandela's personal security detail, and in 1989, the United Democratic Front, "disowned" her for "violating human rights ... in the name of the struggle against apartheid". The ANC in exile issued a statement criticising her judgment, after she refused to heed instructions, issued from prison by Nelson Mandela, to dissociate herself from the Football Club.
Lolo Sono and Siboniso Shabalala
In November 1988, 21-year-old Lolo Sono, and his 19-year-old friend Siboniso Shabalala, disappeared in Soweto. Sono's father said he saw his son in a kombi with Winnie Mandela, and that his son had been badly beaten. Sono claimed that Winnie Mandela had labelled her son a spy, and had said she was "taking him away". At the subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, Sono's stepmother said, "I am pleading with Mrs Mandela today, in front of the whole world, that please, Mrs Mandela, give us our son back. Even if he is dead, let Mrs Mandela give us the remains of our son, so that we must bury him decently." Sono and Shabalala's bodies were exhumed from pauper's graves in Soweto's Avalon Cemetery in 2013, by the National Prosecuting Authority's Missing People's Task Team, having been stabbed soon after their abductions.[9]
Sepei and Asvat killings
On 29 December 1988, Jerry Richardson, who was coach of the Mandela United Football Club, abducted 14-year-old James Seipei (also known as Stompie Sepei) and three other youths from the home of Methodist minister, Rev. Paul Verryn, claiming she had the youths taken to her home because she suspected the reverend was sexually abusing them (allegations that were baseless). The four were beaten to get them to admit to having had sex with the minister. Seipei was accused of being an informer, and his body later found in a field with stab wounds to the throat on 6 January 1989.
In 1991, Mrs Mandela was acquitted of all but the kidnapping of Sepei. A key witness, Katiza Cebekhulu, who was going to testify that Madikizela-Mandela had killed Sepei, had been tortured and kidnapped to Zambia by her supporters, prior to the trial, to prevent him testifying against her. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal.
In 1992, she was accused of ordering the murder of Dr. Abu Baker Asvat, a family friend, and prominent Soweto doctor, who had examined Seipei at Mandela's house, after Seipei had been abducted, but before he had been killed. Mandela's role in the Asvat killing was later probed as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in 1997. She was said to have paid the equivalent of $8,000 and supplied the firearm used in the killing, which took place on 27 January 1989. The hearings were later adjourned amid claims that witnesses were being intimidated on Winnie Mandela's orders.
In a 2017 documentary about the life and activism of Winnie Mandela, former Soweto police officer Henk Heslinga alleged that former safety minister Sydney Mufamadi instructed him to re-open the investigation into the death of Moeketsi, as well as all other cases made against Winnie Mandela, for the purpose of charging Winnie with murder. According to Heslinga, Richardson admitted during an interview that Moeketsi discovered he was an informant, and that he killed the child to cover his tracks.
In January 2018, ANC MP Mandla Mandela, Nelson Mandela's grandson by his first wife, Evelyn Mase, called for the Winnie Mandela's role in the Asvat and Sepei murders to be probed.
In April 2018, Joyce Sepei, mother of the late Stompie Seipei, told media that she does not believe that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was involved in her son’s murder.
Transition to democracy
During South Africa's transition to multi-racial democracy, she adopted a far less conciliatory attitude than her husband did towards white South Africans. She was seen on her husband's arm when he was released in February 1990, the first time the couple had been seen in public for nearly 30 years.
However, their 38-year marriage ended in April 1992 after it was revealed she had been unfaithful to her husband during his imprisonment. Their divorce was finalised in March 1996. She then adopted the surname "Madikizela-Mandela". Appointed Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in May 1994, she was dismissed 11 months later following allegations of corruption. Madikizela-Mandela actively campaigned for the ANC in South Africa's first non-racial elections.
In 1992, she lost her position as the head of the ANC social welfare department, amid allegations of corruption. She remained extremely popular amongst many ANC supporters, however. In December 1993 and April 1997, she was elected president of the ANC Women's League, although she withdrew her candidacy for ANC Deputy President at the movement's Mafikeng conference in December 1997. Earlier in 1997, she appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Archbishop Desmond Tutu as chairman of the commission recognised her importance in the anti-apartheid struggle, but exhorted her to apologise and to admit her mistakes. In a guarded response, she admitted "things went horribly wrong".
In 2002, Madizela-Mandela was found guilty by a Parliamentary ethics committee of failing to disclose donations and financial interests.
TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) findings
The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation commission (TRC), issued in 1998, found "Ms Winnie Madikizela Mandela politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the Mandela United Football Club" and that she "was responsible, by omission, for the commission of gross violations of human rights." The TRC report also stated that Sepei trial witness Katiza Cebekhulu's abduction to Zambia, where he was detained without trial for almost 3 years by the Kenneth Kaunda government, before moving to the UK was done by the ANC, and in the "interests" of Madikizela-Mandela. The TRC found allegations against Methodist minister Paul Verryn to be "unfounded and without any merit" and that "Madikizela-Mandela deliberately and maliciously slandered Verryn...in an attempt to divert attention away from herself and [her] associates...". The TRC also found that she was responsible for the abduction of, and assaults on, Stompie Sepei, and that she had attempted to cover up his death by claiming he had fled to Botswana. She was also found to be responsible by the TRC for the 1988 disappearance of Lolo Sono and Siboniso Shabalala.
Legal problems
On 24 April 2003, Winnie Mandela was 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 had pleaded not guilty. The charges related to money taken from loan applicants' accounts for a funeral fund, but from which the applicants did not benefit. Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison. Shortly after the conviction, she resigned from all leadership positions in the ANC, including her parliamentary seat and the presidency of the ANC Women's League.
In July 2004, an appeal judge of the Pretoria High Court ruled that "the crimes were not committed for personal gain". The judge overturned the conviction for theft, but upheld the one for fraud, handing her a three years and six months suspended sentence.
Return to politics
When the ANC announced the election of its National Executive Committee on 21 December 2007, Madikizela-Mandela placed first with 2,845 votes.
Apology to riot victims
Madikizela-Mandela criticised the anti-immigrant violence in May–June 2008 that began in Johannesburg and spread throughout the country, and blamed the government's lack of suitable housing provisions for the sentiments behind the riots. She apologised to the victims of the riots[69] and visited the Alexandra township. She offered her home as shelter for an immigrant family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She warned that the perpetrators of the violence could strike at the Gauteng train system.
2009 general election
Madikizela-Mandela secured fifth place on the ANC's electoral list for the 2009 general election, behind party president and immediate former President of South Africa Jacob Zuma, former President Kgalema Motlanthe, Deputy President Baleka Mbete, and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. An article in The Observer suggested her position near the top of the list indicated that the party's leadership saw her as a valuable asset in the election with regard to solidifying support among the party's grassroots and the poor.
2010 interview with Nadira Naipaul
In 2010, Madikizela-Mandela was interviewed by Nadira Naipaul. In the interview, she attacked her ex-husband, claiming that he had "let blacks down", that he was only "wheeled out to collect money", and that he is "nothing more than a foundation". She further attacked his decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk. Among other things, she reportedly claimed Mandela was no longer "accessible" to her daughters. She referred to Archbishop Tutu, in his capacity as the head of the Truth and Reconciliation commission, as a "cretin".
The interview attracted media attention, and the ANC announced that it would ask her to explain her comments regarding Nelson Mandela. On 14 March 2010, a statement was issued on behalf of Winnie Mandela claiming that the interview was a fabrication.
In popular culture
Mandela was portrayed by Alfre Woodard in the 1987 HBO TV movie, Mandela. Ms Woodard earned both a CableACE Award and an NAACP Image Award for her performance, as did costar Danny Glover, who portrayed Nelson Mandela.
Tina Lifford played her in the 1997 TV film Mandela and de Klerk. Sophie Okonedo portrayed her in the BBC drama Mrs Mandela, first broadcast on BBC Four on 25 January 2010.
Jennifer Hudson played her in Winnie Mandela, directed by Darrell Roodt, released in Canada by D Films on 16 September 2011. Roodt, Andre Pieterse, and Paul L. Johnson based the film's script on Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob's biography, Winnie Mandela: A Life. The Creative Workers Union of South Africa opposed the choice of Hudson in the title role, saying the use of foreign actors to tell the country's stories undermined efforts to develop the national film industry.
In 2007, an opera based on her life called The Passion of Winnie was produced in Canada, however, she was declined a visa to attend its world premiere and associated gala fundraising concert.
Mandela was again portrayed in the 2013 film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom by actress Naomie Harris (British actor Idris Elba played Nelson Mandela). On viewing the film, Madikizela-Mandela told Harris it was "the first time she felt her story had been captured on film". Gugulethu okaMseleku, writing in The Guardian, stated that the film had returned Winnie Mandela to her rightful place, recognising her role in "the struggle" that, "for South African women ... was more fundamental than her husband's."
Honours and awards
In 1985, Mrs. Mandela won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award along with fellow activists Allan Boesak and Beyers Naudé for their human rights work in South Africa. She received a Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1988.
In January 2018, the University Council and University Senate of Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, approved the award of an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree to Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, in recognition of her fight against apartheid in South Africa.
Death
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg on 2 April 2018 at the age of 81. She suffered from diabetes and had recently undergone several major surgeries. She "had been in and out of hospital since the star
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie_Madikizela-Mandela
Sourced on 14th April, 2018.
