By Lindiwe Tsele – Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Our Recognised Warrior Queen.
Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela – Mandela. Nomzamo, her name means – “On Trial”, she met and married Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela. Rolihlahla means – “Extract The Bitter Truth”. Their lives became endless struggles.
African names were not allowed in Missionary schools because it was said, they were primitive, and difficult to pronounce. So every one of us were given Christian names i.e. Christian names. In reality European names.
Missionaries were just as repressive in trying to turn us into Black Europeans without the means to be. This turned us into what the Boers called ape or mental slaves.
Into that life we all staggered, trying to be civilised according to British and European standards, when in truth, all they wanted were efficient slaves in their backyards, in their kitchens to wash, iron, clean and cook for them. On top of that, in our own homes we were being raided, almost all hours of the day and night.
We can never fully describe police raids. It was just horrible!
One would just come in from work, wash babies and feed family. African families in those days lived in two or three small rooms, with outside toilets and as you just put your tired body to your bed then, Bang! Bang! Bang!
Who’s that? “It’s the police” comes the harsh answer.
“What do you want?”
“Open this door or I kick it open!”
Sometimes they would say, “open this door or I’ll shoot!”
This was going on and on and on. Weekends without a raid were rare. Sometimes it was not police but gangsters who targeted the so-called rich Africans.
Those so called rich Africans were ordinary nurses, teachers and occasionally, lawyers, doctors, clerks or small business families. All because, those with salaries were perceived to be rich.
In that insecurity, Nomzamo (Winnie) and her husband had to bring up their children while working as a Social Worker and Rolihlahla (Nelson Mandela) as a Lawyer.
Those conditions forced almost everybody to have a relative or two to help out with the children. Our salaries were too low to afford servants.
At times raids got quite ferocious.
So much so that some people sent their children back home to wherever they’d come from.
But before long, the children and relatives would be back in Johannesburg.
This is because, back home, the Boers raided African homes and sometimes threatened to take whatever the Africans had received from those working in urban areas.
Most of our lives revolved around raids.
When Africans got militant, the state called us communists they arrested teachers, reverends, nurses and almost every African who dared to say enough was enough. There was blood everywhere. Nurses’ white uniforms were like butcher’s aprons in a slaughterhouse.
Some nurses suffered nervous breakdown and still have not recovered.
Nomzamo, her children and her husband were among the nearly two hundred arrested for treason in the 1950s.
Nomzamo finally had to bring in her mother-in-law all the way from Qunu, in the Eastern Cape to help look after her children.
What the Boers did not reckon with was that the more they bullied us, the tougher some of us became.
Come 1976 and the Boers overstated themselves by forcing youngsters to read in their Afrikan Dutch and up went the fire! The revolution was on!
Since nearly two hundred African men had been arrested for treason and banished to Robin Island forever if the Boer government could have had their way. Women, sons and daughters all had to shift as best they could.
This time, they were kicking people left, right and center. Thousands of us found our way out of South of Africa.
So many died needless deaths, all because the West wanted our minerals in order to make profits for their comfortable lives, whilst we bury children for lack of food, water and housing.
Nomzamo, amongst thousands of women and men, became our recognised warrior queen, in spite of almost living in and out of prison.
The Boers seriously underrated Africans. It felt like they were stopping the birth of a child whose time had come to be born.
Millions of children were sent out to Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, and Zimbabwe and to the whole world rather than school in South Africa with its repressive syllabus and shootings.
Our warrior Queen Nomzamo, will live in our hearts and minds forever.
To her immediate family, all we can say is a very big THANK-YOU!
WESTERN countries put a hell of a lot of pressure on the whole country for the so-called freedom. They got all our minerals and we got nothing, not even a change of name.
The so-called African presidents we have, are first approved by the West. Their allegiance is therefore to their White masters than to us as their voters. When you realise this, you will then understand why the WEST was so afraid of Nomzamo at the top. They knew she was not going to obey their instructions if they went against her or us her people.
Our Warrior Queen Nomzamo, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, has shown that women can be as militant as men and this is why the WEST preferred to deal with Mandela who they had broken in prison, rather than deal with Nomzamo because she had become a fearless soldier dealing with the government for all the years he was in prison.
We have to know that oppressors will only let go of us when we learn to take control of our own lands and minerals. We are tired of living like slaves in our own country and living like refugees in their countries, forever threatened with deportations for the crime of being black. Those who believe in prayer can do so forever. But as long as we let them get away with profits taken from African soil at gunpoints, they will never ever let go.
So Africans, wherever you are on this planet, you must know that imperialists from the highest and holiest of popes, their business on this earth is to make us obedient to their Imperial Masters, whose needs on this earth are to keep us as their mental slaves.
Nkosazana Yesizwesimnyama – Queen of Afrika
Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Wathint’ abafazi wathinti’mbokodo!
You’ve touched women, you’ve touched a bolder!
Gokra lama gokra – Warrior Amongst Warriors!
Ululwile udabi lwesizwe! – You have fought the Nations war!
Isizwe sithi Bayethe! – The Nation Salutes You!
Lala Ngo-Xolo Mpondokazi! – Sleep peacefully Princess!
Lala Ngoxolo -m-Afrikakazi! – Sleep peacefully Afrikan Princess!
ALUTA CONTINUA!
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