Winnie Mandela- A Life Well Lived (1936- 2018)

I will always prick their consciences and I will always remind them of the painful past they want us to forget, I will always be that person who makes their consciences when they want to pretend that everything is fine, South Africa is free.

Winnie Mandela” in an interview with Felicia Mabuza.

South Africa’s anti-apartheid activist and liberation hero, Winnie Mandela has died at the age of 81 after a long illness. She was born Nomzamo “one who strives” Winfreda Madikizela in 1936 and later became the face of the struggle against apartheid alongside her husband, Nelson.

Winnie’s parents were Columbus and Gertrude Madikizela from the Transkei area and were Xhosa. She grew up in Cape Province. Winnie’s mother died when she was just 9 and this undoubtedly had an impact on her. Most black people migrated to the urban areas in those days from different tribal lands especially to Johannesburg which was the epicenter of South African life and Winnie was no exception.

Winnie studied Social Work at the Jan Hofmeyr School, and earned a degree in Social Work in 1956. Several years later earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Witwatersrand. Winnie was an educated woman in her own right, the first university trained black social worker in Johannesburg and among the few educated elite of the city.

She married the then 39-year-old Nelson at the age of 23. At the time Nelson Mandela was divorced and facing charges of treason. The charges against Nelson may have made most women nervous but not Winnie; she believed in him and the two married in 1958. Winnie and Nelson dreamt of and collectively fought for a new South Africa but they could not get there together. After all that struggle she did not enjoy her status as first lady of Republic of South Africa. They both believed in attaining independence by force but when he came back from prison, Nelson began advocating for peace. The change in ideologies and pressure from western donors and ANC leaders contributed to their divorce. They just became two different people who viewed life in different ways shaped by their experiences.

Due to her political activities, Winnie was regularly detained by the South African government. She was tortured, subjected to house arrest, kept under surveillance, held in solitary confinement for over a year and banished to a remote town. She emerged as a leading opponent of apartheid during the later years of her husband’s imprisonment (1963 – 1990). For many of those years, she was exiled to the town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State and confined to the area, except for the times she was allowed to visit her husband at the prison on Robben Island. Beginning in 1969, she spent eighteen months in solitary confinement at Pretoria Central Prison. It was at this time that Winnie Mandela became well known in the West. She organized local clinics, campaigned actively for equal rights and was actively promoted by the ANC as a symbol of its struggle against apartheid.

In the past few decades there has been a concerted effort to mischaracterize Winnie as a radical and to diminish her place in South African history. History in the west will continue to glorify the legacy of peaceful Mandela but in South Africa it is the legacy of Mama Winnie that needs live on if South Africans are to ever become totally free. It is Winnie’s ideas that are now embraced by many youths in the fight for economic independence.

Winnie leaves behind 2 children and 8 grandchildren.

Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’.