Struggle icon Winnie dies after long illness
• Ramaphosa says she was a voice of defiance and resistance • Political parties pay tribute
The “mother of the nation”, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, died on Monday afternoon, closing a chapter on an iconic life characterised by resistance and defiance.
The anti-apartheid veteran unapologetically spoke truth to power, even when her own movement, the ANC, had lost its way.
A larger than life figure, Madikizela-Mandela, who married Nelson Mandela in 1958, died at the Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg after a lengthy illness, a family spokesman said.
While Madikizela-Mandela, 81, often courted controversy, her mammoth political contribution to the struggle against apartheid was hailed by political parties across the spectrum on Monday night.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address to the nation that she had been a “voice of defiance and resistance” in the face of repression.
“For many years, she bore the brunt of the senseless brutality of the apartheid state with stoicism and fortitude. Despite the hardships she faced, she never doubted that the struggle for freedom and democracy would succeed. She remained throughout her life a tireless advocate for the dispossessed and the marginalised. She was a voice for the voiceless.”
Soon after his address, Ramaphosa visited the Mandela home in Soweto on Monday night. He described her as an “abiding symbol of freedom” for the people of SA.
Mandela’s grandson Zondwa told journalists that her passing was a tragic loss.
Energy Minister Jeff Radebe, addressing journalists at the hospital, said that she had died peacefully on Monday and that memorial arrangements would be announced once they had been finalised. She would be given a state funeral.
ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe said that MadikizelaMandela had been one of the last leaders unafraid to tell the party what was “right and wrong” and that it would miss her guidance. In recent years, MadikizelaMandela was increasingly critical of the trajectory of the country and the party, saying in 2016 that the party was in “crisis”.
Neighbours of the late struggle veteran and community members lined the streets near her home in Soweto, while the news of her passing made international headlines.
A local man, Lloyd Kutama, said that after finding out about Madikizela-Mandela’s passing, he had dropped his chores and went to the house to mourn with the family. He said that she had left a big gap in the country and that her contribution to society and the struggle for freedom was exemplary.
“She was really a fighter. All we are left with is the history. We are very sad as South Africans and Sowetan[s].”
People could be overheard sharing different stories about the woman who the nation affectionately referred to as “Mama Winnie”.
“She always felt like a mother to all of us, even if we have never met her, we felt her love,” said a group of teenagers.
Condolences streamed in, with the ANC Women’s League saying it was shocked and devastated by her death.
Many political leaders took to Twitter after the news of her death, including EFF leader Julius Malema, with whom she had a close relationship.
Madikizela-Mandela had said in an interview that she hoped to see Malema return to the ANC before she died.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane described her as “an incredible struggle hero”, who played her role in the liberation of the people of SA.
United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said she would be remembered as a feisty and vocal freedom fighter who did not hesitate to speak her mind.
Parliament’s presiding officers have described the late Madikizela-Mandela as a struggle icon who on her own had carved her role in shaping the struggle for freedom. “She defied the repressive laws and associated patriarchy, embodied a brave character of an unflinching woman in the wake of all odds against her throughout her life,” National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete and National Council of Provinces chairwoman Thandi Modise said.
“She was a solid rock, a defender of the vulnerable and defenceless.”
They said she was a torch bearer to gender mainstreaming, and an inspiration to millions of down-trodden women across the length and breadth of the country, across the continent and the world.
Winnie MadikizelaMandela’s marriage to Nelson Mandela and her anti-apartheid activism ensured many South Africans saw her as “the mother of the nation”, but her past was littered with dark controversies.
Born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela but always known simply as “Winnie“, she was married to Mandela for 38 years, one of the most storied romances of modern history.
Most of their marriage was spent apart, with Mandela imprisoned for 27 years, leaving her to raise their two daughters alone and to keep alive his political dream under the repressive white-minority regime. Then in 1990 the world watched when Mandela finally walked out of prison — hand in hand with Winnie.
But they separated just two years later and divorced in 1996 after a legal wrangle that revealed her affair with a young bodyguard. With or without Mandela, Winnie built her own role as a tough, glamorous and outspoken black activist with a loyal grassroots following in the segregated townships.
“From every situation I have found myself in, you can read the political heat in the country,” she said in a biography.
Winnie was born on September 26 1936 in the village of Mbongweni in what is now the Eastern Cape. She completed university, a rarity for black women at the time, and became the first qualified social worker at Johannesburg’s Baragwanath Hospital. This was her political awakening, especially her research work in Alexandra township on infant mortality, which found 10 deaths in every 1,000 births.
“I started to realise the abject poverty under which most people were forced to live, the appalling conditions created by the inequalities of the system,” she said.
Mandela, who was then married to his first wife, met Winnie at a bus stop in Soweto when she was 22. They married in June 1958, but he soon went underground, pursued by the apartheid authorities. In October of the same year Winnie was arrested for the first time at a protest by women against the pass system that restricted movements of black people in white-designated areas. After Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1964, Winnie was also in and out of jail as the police hounded her in a bid to demoralise him.
Security forces tortured her, tried locking her up, confined her to Soweto and then banished her to the desolate town of Brandfort, where her house was bombed twice. She was allowed to visit her husband in prison rarely, and they were always divided by a glass screen.
Throughout the height of apartheid, Winnie remained at the forefront of the struggle, urging students in the Soweto uprising in 1976 to “fight to the bitter end”.
But in the 1980s, the militant-martyr began to be seen as a liability for Mandela and the liberation movement.
She had surrounded herself with a band of vigilante bodyguards called the Mandela United Football Club, who earned a terrifying reputation for violence.
Winnie was widely linked to “necklacing”, when suspected traitors were burnt alive by a petrol-soaked car tyre being put over their head and set alight. Her notoriety was reinforced by a speech in 1986 when she declared that “with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country”.
In 1991, Winnie was convicted of kidnapping and assault over the killing of a 14-year-old boy, Stompie Moeketsi. Stompie, who was accused of being an informer, was murdered by her bodyguards in 1989.
Her jail sentence was reduced to a fine, and she denied involvement in any murders when she appeared before Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. “She was a tremendous stalwart of our struggle, and icon of liberation … something went wrong, horribly, badly wrong,” Tutu said as damning testimony implicated her.
She served as a deputy minister in then president Mandela’s government, but was sacked for insubordination and eased out of the top ranks of the governing party.
After a 2003 conviction for fraud, she later rehabilitated her political career, being allocated an ANC seat in Parliament after the 2009 elections.
But her bitterness emerged in a 2010 newspaper interview, when she said: “Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks.” She also called Tutu a “cretin” and the reconciliation process a “charade”, though she later claimed the quotes were never meant to be published.
Despite it all, she was a regular visitor to Mandela’s bedside in his final months, and she said she was present when he died. He did not leave her anything in his will.
At her lavish 80th birthday party in Cape Town, Winnie wore a sparkling white dress and beamed with pleasure as she was lauded by guests who included senior politicians from rival parties. “Mama Winnie has lived a rich and eventful life, whose victories and setbacks have traced the progress of the struggle of our people for freedom,” then vice-president Cyril Ramaphosa told guests at the event. /AFP