Winnie Mandela dies at 81
NELSON Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie, the iconic anti-apartheid fighter and revolutionary, died yesterday.
The long-time ANC activist, who had been suffering from ill-health for many years, passed away in hospital, aged 81.
In 1990 the couple were famously photographed hand-in-hand as Mandela walked free from jail after spending 27 years behind bars.
Winnie was an outspoken campaigner known as the “Mother of the Nation” because of her struggle against white minority rule.
But her legacy was tainted in her later years amid convictions for kidnap and assault – and she was accused of dividing South Africa.
Yet last night, tributes still flooded in for her from across the world.
Retired Archbishop and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu praised her as a “defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid”. He added: “Her courageous defiance was deeply inspirational to me and to generations of activists.”
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “With the departure of Mama Winnie we have lost one of the very few who are left of our stalwarts and icons.
“She was one of those who would tell us exactly what is wrong and right, and we are going to be missing that guidance.”
Her family issued a statement, saying they were reporting her death with “profound sadness”.
It read: “She died after a long illness, for which she had been in and out of hospital since the start of the year. She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones.”
It went on to describe her as, “one of the greatest icons of the struggle against apartheid”.
It read: “She fought valiantly against the apartheid state and sacrificed her life for the freedom of the country.
“Her activism and resistance to apartheid landed her in jail on numerous occasions, eventually causing her banishment to the small town of Brandfort in the then Orange Free State.”
“She kept the memory of her imprisoned husband Nelson Mandela alive during his years on Robben Island and helped give the struggle for justice in South Africa one of its most recognisable faces.
“She dedicated most of her adult life to the cause of the people and for this was known far and wide as the Mother of the Nation.
“The Mandela family are deeply grateful for the gift of her life and even as our hearts break at her passing, we urge all those who loved her to celebrate this most remarkable woman.”
British Labour MP Grahame Morris, a lifelong anti-apartheid campaigner, said: “Winnie Mandela was a leading political figure in her own right and a key player in the liberation struggle in South Africa. In her time, she endured arrest, persecution and torture at the hands of the racist apartheid regime.
“She was never afraid to stand up to them. “Unfortunately she was later overshadowed by many scandals involving corruption and murder and kidnapping.
“These were completely unacceptable and it tarnished many of the things she had achieved. But her work in fighting against apartheid will be remembered forever in history.
“Her courageous defiance of the brutal South African regime was deeply inspirational to a whole generation of political activists throughout the world.”
Winnie had been well enough to attend a fivehour church service in Soweto on Good Friday with her granddaughter Zoleka.
But she complained of flu-like symptoms over the weekend and died yesterday afternoon in a hospital in Johannesburg.
She was born in 1936 in the Eastern Cape and was a social worker when she met Mandela, then a lawyer, in 1957. They were married a year later and had two children together.
However‚ her married life with Mandela was short-lived‚ as he was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason.
During her husband’s time in prison‚ Winnie was subjected to the relentless attentions of the brutal apartheid forces. She was placed under house arrest and at one time banished to a remote town in the then Orange Free State. In 1969‚ she became one of the first detainees under Section 6 of the notorious Terrorism Act of 1967. She was held for 18 months in solitary confinement in a condemned cell at Pretoria Central Prison, before being charged under the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950.
But, in later years, she caused controversy. At a rally in 1986 she supported the horrific use of “necklacing” – a method of killing, often used against suspected police informants, in which a petrol-soaked tyre was forced around someone’s body and then set alight.
The speech caused an international outcry, particularly in western capitals.
She said: “We have no guns – we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol. Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.”
She became a pivotal figure in the antiapartheid movement, leading to accusations of
Winnie endured arrest and torture at the hands of the regime GRAHAME MORRIS MP AND CAMPAIGNER
abuse of power. Evidence emerged in the dying years of apartheid of the brutality carried out by her Soweto enforcers, the so-called “Mandela United Football Club”.
Some switched her label from Mother of the Nation to “Mugger of the Nation”.
In 1991, she was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to the assault of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi, who was killed by one of her bodyguards. Her minders had abducted him in 1989‚ along with three other youngsters‚ from the home of a Methodist divorce court judge: “Can minister. Winnie was I put it simply, my lord? If sentenced to six years in the entire universe tried jail, but this was later to persuade me to reconcile reduced on appeal to a with the defendant, I fine and a two-year would not. I am determined suspended sentence. to get rid of this marriage.”
The conviction swayed The Mandelas had been much of the public against her. married almost 38 years.
The Truth and Reconciliation After the first democratic Commission said that Winnie Winnie’s grandson
election in South Africa in 1994‚ was “politically and morally Zondwa and family at hospital
Winnie was elected as an MP and accountable for the gross violations of human was appointed Deputy Minister of Arts and rights committed by the MUFC” who had began Culture. She was fired by her ex-husband, who a reign of terror in the racist state’s final years. died in 2013, after an unauthorised trip to Ghana. In 2003, she was sentenced to five years in jail
She had been an MP ever since‚ despite few after a court found that she had stolen £85,000 appearances in Parliament in the past few years. from the African National Congress Women’s
League, which she led at the time. Her role in the history of South Africa will be
But again, the well-connected Winnie debated for decades to come. However, to many, narrowly avoided prison when her sentence was she was an idol. first reduced and then suspended entirely Idris Elba, who played her husband in the film because of what the judge described as her Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, tweeted: “Rest “difficult role in public life”. in peace Mama Winnie. My heart is heavy right
Author John Carlin has alleged Winnie’s now. You lived a full and important life contributing divorce from Nelson Mandela in 1996, shortly to the liberation of a nation by force and after he became President of South Africa, was actual activism. You will never be forgotten.” fuelled by her infidelities. Mandela told the