South Africa loses mother of freedom
WINNIE Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela described as the “mother of her nation”, has died at the age of 81.
Ms Madikizela-Mandela died peacefully yesterday surrounded by her family following a long illness that has 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 Ms 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 Ms Madikizela-Mandela on April 11 and a national funeral on April 14, said Mr Ramaphosa, who declared earlier that South Africans had lost “a mother, a grandmother, a friend, a comrade, a leader and an icon”.
Ministers and national figures paid tribute, including retired South African cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who said: “Her courageous defiance was deeply inspirational to me, and to generations of activists.” Born on September 26, 1936, in Bizana, Eastern Cape province, Ms 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 Mr Mandela at a Soweto bus stop in 1957, starting a whirlwind romance that led to their marriage a year later. After Mr Mandela was jailed for life in 1964 for plotting to overthrow the government, Ms Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for his release.
She punched the air in the clenched-fist salute of black power as she walked hand-inhand with Mr Mandela out of Victor Verster prison, near Cape Town, in 1990.
For husband and wife, it was a crowning moment that led four years later to the end of centuries of white domination when Mr Mandela became South Africa’s first black president. But their marriage began to fall apart in the years after his release and the couple divorced in 1996. They had two children together.
Later with the brutality of her Soweto enforcers, the “Mandela United Football Club”, Ms Madikizela-Mandela’s sobriquet switched from “Mother” of the nation to “Mugger”. Blamed for the killing of activist Stompie Seipei she was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping and assaulting the 14-year-old.