Winnie Mandela Dies At 81
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, anti-apartheid activist and ex-wife of the late South African president Nelson Mandela, has died at 81 after a lengthy illness. She passed away on April 2 surrounded by her family at a hospital in Johannesburg, and is survived by two daughters from her marriage to Nelson Mandela, as well as several grandchildren.
Known as the “Mother of the Nation” to millions of South Africans and considered “a voice for the voiceless,” she is being mourned as a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle. Her memorial service will be held on April 11, and her national funeral is scheduled for April 14.
She was born Nomzamo (“one who undergoes trials”) Winifred Madikizela on September 26, 1936 in the Eastern Cape province of Bizana. When she grew up she became Johannesburg’s first black female social worker. She researched high infant mortality rates in a black township and linked it to poverty cause by racism. This led to her becoming politicized.
Winnie met Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist and lawyer, at a bus stop in Soweto in 1957 and they married in June 1958. Her father prophetically was said to have warned her, “If your man is a wizard, then you must become a witch.”
Nelson worked against social injustice as a commander of the ANC’s armed wing, “Spear Of The Nation.” By 1962 he was arrested and in 1964 was sentenced to life in prison after proclaiming his willingness to die for his ideals.
Winnie kept up the fight and kept Mandela’s name with her iron-willed defiance of police, arrests, harassment and banning orders. The Attorney General refused to prosecute her because he thought she was “untouchable.”
Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994. He and Winnie divorced two years later in 1996 after 37 years of marriage, during 27 of which he had been imprisoned.
They had two daughters. She went back to using her family name and was from then on known as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Not everyone celebrated Winnie Mandela as a hero. She was a central figure in the establishment of the Mandela United Football Club, which was seen by many as her private vigilante unit. She was sentenced to jail in 1991 and was found “accountable, politically and morally” for the violations of human rights committed by the Mandela United Football Club. On appeal, her sentence of six years was reduced to a fine and a suspended sentence of two years.
In 1992, she and her husband separated, and she was fired from her position as a deputy cabinet minister in her husband’s administration in 1995.
In spite of many scandals, she remained a Member of Parliament, and in 2016 she was granted the Order of Luthuli in Silver by the South African president, citing her lifelong contribution in the fight in the liberation of the people of South Africa.
Regardless of charges laid at her feet, she has been praised as a voice of defiance and resistance and a symbol of the people’s desire to be free by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
