Nomzamo Winifred (Winnie) Zanyiwe Madikizela-Mandela, who died on April 2 aged 81 during a protracted illness, will forever be remembered as one of the most important female politicians of the second half of the 20th century. The long and often messy arc of her life falls easily into a triptych. In the first frame, you have the feisty and dashing spouse of Nelson Mandela before the iconic freedom fighter was incarcerated in Robben Island after the famous 1963-64 Rivonia Trial. In the second frame, there is Winnie, the bereft wife who had to juggle the discordant roles of wife, mother, and political symbol; and in the third and arguably the most tragic frame, you have a woman admired and loathed in equal measure by the South African populace, jettisoned by a husband who, perhaps correctly, believed that the gulf that had emerged between the two of them was irreparable.
By the time of her passing last week, the sheer weight of the third trimester of her life was such that it threatened to erase the first two. Repeated engulfment in corruption scandals, combined with the dubious project of the Nelson Mandela Football Club, and the accessory indictment in connection with a series of disappearances and the abduction and killing of teenager James “Stompie” Seipei Moeketsi, had left her reputation more or less in tatters. And, there is no whitewashing it: Winnie made many mistakes.
Who knows? She may simply have been carried away by the thrill of the limelight in which she had to step once her famous husband was locked up by the apartheid regime. Nor is it implausible to imagine her being genuinely forlorn at the enormity of the task she and the South African resistance faced, one for which no person, male or female, could have been prepared, least of all the daughter of a schoolteacher who hopelessly fell in love with a rising lawyer 16 years her senior.
What this means is that her totally human mistakes should not be allowed to occlude the magnitude of her achievements as an outstanding campaigner for social justice, friend of the poor (she opted for, remained, and took her last breath in the black township of Soweto long after everyone had fled), indefatigable freedom fighter, and all-round social rebel. Long before the term was degraded by misapplication, she was “Mother of the Nation,” and for all the stain left on her reputation by fraud convictions, her contributions to making the African National Congress (ANC) one of the two most formidable and organisationally-savvy political parties in African history (the other is the defunct Action Group) are truly priceless.
South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, captured the full extent of Winnie’s achievements when, in a televised tribute, he described her as a “champion of justice and equality” whose “dedication to the plight of her people gained her the love and respect of the nation.” President Ramaphosa continued: “For many years, she bore the brunt of the senseless brutality of the apartheid state with stoicism and fortitude. Despite the hardship she faced, she never doubted that the struggle for freedom and democracy would triumph and succeed. She remained throughout her life a tireless advocate for the dispossessed and the marginalised. She was the voice for the voiceless.”
Winnie’s contributions put her firmly in the historical pantheon of women who dedicated their lives to the improvement of humanity. From a long list: Wangari Maathai, Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Miriam Makeba, Kudirat Abiola, Hajiya Gambo Sawaba, and Margaret Ekpo. Winnie was never in doubt about her political work and the concatenation of circumstances which combined to put her in history’s bullseye. As she told an audience at the American University, Cairo, in 1996: “I learned to deal with the police … to be tough … to survive. I want you to know where I come from so you can tell where I am headed. I’m like thousands of women in South Africa who lost their men to cities and prisons … I stand defiant, tall and strong.”
You sure did, Mama Winnie. Rest in peace.
