Winnie Mandela dies at 81 after long illness

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, an anti-apartheid stalwart and wife to Nelson Mandela when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, died after a long illness, her personal assistant Zodwa Zwane said. She was 81.

Zwane gave no further details yesterday but said a statement would be released later.

Hailed as mother of the “new” South Africa, Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy as an anti-apartheid heroine was undone when she was revealed to be a ruthless ideologue prepared to sacrifice laws and lives in pursuit of revolution and redress.

Her uncompromising methods and refusal to forgive contrasted sharply with the reconciliation espoused by her husband Mandela as he worked to forge a stable, pluralistic democracy from the racial division and oppression of apartheid.

The contradiction helped kill their marriage and destroyed the esteem in which she was held by many South Africans, although the firebrand activist retained the support of radical black nationalists to the end.

During her husband’s 27-year incarceration, Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for his release and for the rights of black South Africans, suffering years of detention, banishment and arrest by the white authorities.

She remained steadfast and unbowed throughout, emerging to punch the air triumphantly in the clenched- fist salute of black power as she walked hand- inhand with Mandela out of Cape Town’s Victor Vester prison 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. — Reuters