By Peter Olorunnisomo – The demise of Nelson Mandela’s partner in marriage and political struggle lives indelibly in the minds of the world and more so Africa and the African nation of South Africa. No sacrifice could ever have been made and no price was held back as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela paid nearly the same price as her husband for the freedom of South Africa from the strangulating clutches of apartheid.
She sacrificed her joys and marriage, became man in a woman’s nature, and suffered incarceration and the loneliness that only can be matched with Nelson’s in the struggle days. She alone can tell of the quiet nights when shots whispered in her hears, when she had to be militant to plan and conjure strategies for the militancy, when she had to be woman to hear shots that fizzled life out of children and youths, when she had to weep in grunts and stand looking at corpses not sure if it would be the last that she would or just how many more.
Holding forth for a colossus like Mandela and running the ANC militarily, ideologically, financially, and being beaten back by force, deaths, and emotion is certainly not the appropriate way to describe bravery.
She however found a new bravery in silence as she aged. But she wasn’t done. Her presence and influence in the ANC even after Nelson’s death could not be denied or neglected. Here she was the Woman’s woman and the woman’s man.
She had lived life with such memories that would scar many a marine but the clenched saluting hand would not fall until death brought it down to draw the curtains for a peace that she she spent matured life chasing now offered in rest.
South Africa’s former president, Jacob Zuma, paid tribute to the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela at her Soweto home on Wednesday during which he described her as a mother, leader and special type.
Zuma is the latest in a string of high profile leaders to visit the home of the late anti-apartheid campaigner who was critical of Zuma’s rule when he was in office.
“To us there is a pain of losing a mother, of losing a comrade, of losing a leader. A leader who has seen it all. She has been detained, tortured, exiled within the country,” Zuma said.
She was jailed several times for her part in the fight against white-minority rule and she campaigned for the release of her husband at home and abroad.
Winnie Mandela joined her ancestors Mandela died on Monday due to an illness that kept her in and out of hospital since the beginning of the year.
Herbert Maserumule chronicles the twists of her national service. She was dubbed ‘the mother of the nation’ – took the apartheid system head-on. Her life typified the courage to stand up against injustice.
She could not bask in the glory of her revered husband Nelson Mandela and was never simply his wife. Instead she carved out her own political identity in the African National Congress and she was loved and loathed.
Her endorsement of violence to fight the brutality of the apartheid system did not go down well with the ANC leadership. That was her only option and that debate could continue over a thousand pages of history and she would remain the woman through it all.
As Mandela’s wife many thought that she would become South Africa’s First Lady – a title that had been appropriated to her for a long time in the mass democratic movement. Unfortunately, fate had its own way. Madikizela-Mandela was the mother of the nation who never became the first lady.
And residues of her indiscretions began to demand accountability. She had run-ins with the law. An indelible blemish in her biography is certainly her implication in the death of the 14-year-old child activist Stompie Seipei, who was a member of the Mandela Football Club, which she had established to disguise her political mobilisation of young people in the township. Jerry Richardson, the coach of the club who was later exposed as having spied for the apartheid government, apportioned some blame on her. Richardson was sentenced to life imprisonment for the abduction and murder of Seipei. He died in prison.
She later shouldered some responsibility for Seipei’s death in a grudging admission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that things went horribly wrong.
This followed a desperate attempt by the TRC’s chairperson Desmond Tutu to extract a confession – and remorse – from her. She apologised to the Seipei family, but maintained her innocence.
Some people were uneasy about the TRC process as it related to Madikizela-Mandela. Did the ANC abandon her? The ANC took collective responsibility for the human rights violations during the struggle against apartheid. But Madikizela-Mandela was left to take personal responsibility for the atrocities related to the activities of the Mandela United Football Club.
Her biographer Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrop, in the book Winnie Mandela: a Life, writes: “In the world wind of events following Mandela’s release from prison and the start of negotiations designed to ensure a peaceful transition rather than a bloodbath in South Africa… no one bothered to find out what Winnie needed and wanted, how her life had changed or what her aspirations might be… From the moment she was implicated in the serious crimes involving the football club, it was though her entire past had been erased from the public mind.”
There are many questions that relate to her role in the liberation struggle – and post-apartheid South Africa – that historians should critically examine. They go beyond simple biographical narratives.
For example, how would events have unfolded if she hadn’t taken the action she did? What lay behind her penchant for military inspired and violent approaches to the liberation struggle? Was it because she found the ANC too moderate relative to the violence the apartheid system was unleashing? Or was it because of the torture she endured at the hands of the apartheid regime?
And why did she continue to show preference for radical approaches to policy choices even in the post-apartheid South Africa, when her party was in charge?
In expressing her displeasure at what happened to her after Mandela’s release, it was as though, having fought bitterly against apartheid, she was fighting a struggle within a struggle.
From the eye of the world, the fitting and nostalgic comments of the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, describing her death as the exit of a true champion of ‘the struggle for the freedom and dignity of Africans against the inhuman policy of apartheid that existed in South Africa’ captures more.
He described her as ‘the soul and public face of the anti-apartheid struggle while her husband, Nelson Mandela, was in prison’.
“Her sacrifice to the struggle was immense. For example, she suffered banishment by the apartheid regime to a solitary area in Brandfort for a number of years.”
“I remember the iconic and unforgettable picture of Winnie and Nelson Mandela walking hand in hand from Victor Verster prison on the day of Nelson’s release in February 1990 after 27 years as a prisoner.
“And I recall with nostalgia her grace and dignity at my very first official dinner as Commonwealth Secretary-General which my wife and I hosted in London on July 5, 1990, in honour of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.
“My wife and I join her two daughters, Zenani and Zindziwa, and all the people of South Africa in mourning the demise of a woman who, notwithstanding her human frailties, was indeed a great historic figure.”
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