Flawed but fabulous Winnie
When Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died, I messaged an old school friend, liberal, loyal, and faraway from home like me – white like me – and attached a crying face emoji, because that’s what we do these days, hashtag sadness.
But somehow we’d never discussed Winnie.
“I presume you’re joking,” she said. “I hated the bitch.”
No, I protested: I love(d) Winnie. She was formidable, fierce, fabulous, flawed.
What would Nelson be without Winnie?
What would the revolution be without Winnie?
But here’s the thing about being a white child of Eighties South Africa: we never heard about Nelson Mandela because that’s how good the apartheid forces were at their jobs, but Winnie – of course we heard about Winnie.
Nelson was in jail, his sainthood solidifying, but Winnie was out there in the fray, loud and defiant, even when silenced by the state; Winnie was stoking the flames, and sometimes those flames burned out of control.
I was taught she was the devil. I was told to hate her. I complied, because that is how propaganda works. But then over the years I listened to other voices and slowly learned to admire Winnie.
If you’re a prominent woman you’re expected to play nicely, because you’re going to be branded as bitch or saint, Madonna or whore, but Winnie didn’t give a damn.
Here was a woman at war for a cause more important than her husband, her children, her very life.
Subtlety had long since ceased to be part of her fight against apartheid, to be part of the sensibilities of a woman intent on throwing over a violent regime that considered her people inferior, that trained them to be servants, that denied them land, jobs, homes, education, autonomy, dignity, the vote.
She made mistakes, of course. She was human, fragile, but then she grew strong in the face of adversity, she was hardened by circumstance.
White or black, liberal or conservative, every one of us created the Winnie we believed in, the Winnie that fulfilled our hopes, or fuelled our fears.
Ultimately, we each got the Winnie we deserved.