Winnie Mandela, tainted anti-apartheid figurehead, dies at 81

By Dinky Mkhize

 

Then African National Congress (ANC) Womens League President Winnie Madikizela-Mandela smiles during the closing rally of the 51st National Conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in Stellenbosch, South Africa, December 20, 2002. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/Files

 

SOWETO, South Africa (Reuters) - Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who emerged as a combative anti-apartheid campaigner during her husband Nelson Mandela's decades in jail but whose reputation was later tarnished by allegations of violence, died on Monday at the age of 81.

 

Madikizela-Mandela died peacefully surrounded by her family following a long illness that kept her in and out of hospital since the start of the year, family spokesman Victor Dlamini said in a statement.

 

"Winnie Mandela leaves a huge legacy and, as we say in African culture, a gigantic tree has fallen," President Cyril Ramaphosa said after visiting Madikizela-Mandela's house in Soweto, where he was surrounded by singing mourners.

 

"She has been one of the strongest women in our struggle, who suffered immensely under the apartheid regime, who was imprisoned, who was banished, who was treated very badly," he said.

 

An official memorial service will be held for Madikizela-Mandela on April 11 and a national funeral on April 14, said Ramaphosa, who declared earlier that South Africans had lost "a mother, a grandmother, a friend, a comrade, a leader and an icon."

 

A crowd of around 200 people congregated outside Madikizela-Mandela's Soweto home soon after her death was announced, singing and dancing.

 

Ministers and national figures paid tribute, including retired South African cleric and anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who said: "Her courageous defiance was deeply inspirational to me, and to generations of activists."

 

TIRELESS CAMPAIGNER

 

Born on Sept. 26, 1936, in Bizana, Eastern Cape province, Madikizela-Mandela became politicised at an early age in her job as a hospital social worker.

 

The 22-year-old Winnie caught the eye of Mandela at a Soweto bus-stop in 1957, starting a whirlwind romance that led to their marriage a year later.

 

After Nelson Mandela was jailed for life in 1964 for sabotage and plotting to overthrow the government, Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for his release and emerged as a prominent anti-apartheid figure in her own right, undergoing detention, banishment and arrest.

 

She punched the air in the clenched-fist salute of black power as she walked hand-in-hand with Mandela out of Victor Verster prison, near Cape Town, on Feb. 11, 1990.

 

For husband and wife, it was a crowning moment that led four years later to the end of centuries of white domination when Mandela became South Africa's first black president.

 

But their marriage began to fall apart in the years after his release. The couple divorced in 1996, nearly four decades after they were married. They had two children together.

 

The end of apartheid marked the start of a string of legal and political troubles for Madikizela-Mandela.

 

As evidence emerged in the dying years of apartheid of the brutality of her Soweto enforcers, the "Mandela United Football Club", her soubriquet switched from "Mother" of the nation to "Mugger".

 

Blamed for the killing of activist Stompie Seipei, who was found near her Soweto home with his throat cut, she was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping and assaulting the 14-year-old because he was suspected of being an informer. Her six-year jail term was reduced on appeal to a fine.

 

(Writing by Tanisha Heiberg and Joe Brock; editing by John Stonestreet and Adrian Croft)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-04-03

She should have died in Jail with her Area boys.

Good riddance. Evil trash.

No great loss.   

“We have no guns — we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol,” she said at a rally in Soweto. “Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.”

  -  Winnie Mandela, 1986.

"Necklacing" was a method of torture and murder used on suspected police informants, where a tire filled with gasoline was forced around a person's body and set on fire.

Despicable woman.  Good riddance indeed!

 

 

What about if we all walked a mile in her shoes?

 

 

 

1 minute ago, watcharacters said:

 

 

What about if we all walked a mile in her shoes?

 

 

 

Don't know. How about asking the parents of the fourteen year old she had killed?

Certainly no saint...

 

But a victim herself, and she did a lot to end apartheid.

 

Lets just let her RIP.

Edited April 3, 20188 yr by Basil B