Through it all Winnie kept militancy alive
WITH the passing of Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela the ANC has lost arguably the last of the giants in its political pantheon of leaders in whose reflected glory it could bask.
From amongst her contemporaries many will seize the opportunity to join in the mourning of the “mother of the nation” without conscience about the role they have played in isolating her but also in abandoning her revolutionary ethos.
Although the Mandela name she acquired through marriage became an inseparable part of her political identity, Madikizela-Mandela sculpted out of her life the separate, distinct political persona of a colossus.
Her self-sacrifice outside prison and the suffering she endured at the hands of the barbaric apartheid regime was at least comparable, and arguably greater than that of the husband whose cause she had embraced as her own.
The trajectory of their personal lives was to mirror the political – the breakup of the marriage two years after President Nelson Mandela’s release and official divorce in 1996, coinciding with their political estrangement.
But their destinies nonetheless remained tied together by their political and family history.
Madikizela-Mandela – who described herself as the “most unmarried of married women” – hardly ever experienced the “normality” of married life.
There was little time together in the first six years of the 38-year marriage, with the constant disruptions by police harassment, Mandela’s political obligations and the need to go underground to evade arrest.
Indeed destiny dispensed to her a misplaced parsimony for the ordinary pleasures of everyday life. Yet even these ended when Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1963.
The apartheid regime, determined to crush any notion of emancipation amongst the oppressed black majority, imposed a state of emergency, banned the liberation movements and sentenced their leaders to life imprisonment on Robben Island.
This is where the most famous of the resistance fighters in the struggle against colonialism, Makana, had been incarcerated.
From then onwards, Madikizela-Mandela was thrust into the role of being a living symbol of the liberation struggle.
She became not only the unofficial representative of the leadership on Robben Island and in exile, but the Olympian bearer of the torch of resistance and defiance, playing a critical role in retying the knot of history between the generations of the 50s and the 70s.
This role was thrust upon her by the callous, vengeful cruelty of a minority regime enraged by her unbreakable will and defiance. But she embraced it as a duty imposed upon her by history, doing so courageously and with complete devotion.
Whilst Mandela was doing hard labour on Robben Island his spouse was subjected to relentless persecution, banning and house arrest orders, torture and banishment to Brandfort – an internal exile which she described as “my little Siberia”.
But in denouncing her as a terrorist, the regime made an unconscious admission that the defiance of a single black woman could terrorise a system kept in power by one of the ten most powerful armies in the world.
As revealed in her memoirs MadikizelaMandela was conscious of her role as a weapon for potential mobilisation. She contemplated suicide in solitary confinement in the hope of sparking protests worldwide that would isolate the apartheid regime.
As the young generation of 1976 sparked the struggle for national liberation to life, she had no hesitation in showing her support and helped to form the Black Parent Association with Soweto community leader Dr Nthato Motlana.
Her home became a refuge as well as a conduit for recruits for the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Madikizela-Mandela’s determination to keep the spirit of militancy alive led to the formation of the Mandela Football Club.
Opposition to the activities of the Mandela Football Club resulted in MadikizelaMandela’s house being burnt down.
The leadership, both at home and in exile, condemned the club as well as her condoning the necklace method of eliminating askaris, but accepted no responsibility for the impact of the calls to make the country ungovernable and had no strategy to supply arms to the youth facing repression from a regime fighting for its survival.
It is not implausible that the leadership was far less concerned with supporting the rising tide of militancy and managing its excesses than the damage this would do to the secret talks about talks that were commencing.
Madikizela-Mandela was to pay perhaps the most painful and bitter price after Mandela was released and the ANC unbanned.
She was divorced not only by her husband but by her party with gratuitous cruelty.
Her ostracism by the ANC leadership meant she was not included to sit among the dignitaries invited to the inauguration of the country’s first black president – her ex-husband President Nelson Mandela – whose release she had devoted her life to.
The early 90s witnessed a sordid campaign to slander and belittle her role in politics, and to prevent her from contesting the position of ANC Women’s League president in 1991 and the ANC deputy presidency in 1997.
She nonetheless served as an ANC MP from 1994 to 2003 and 2009 to 2018, and was elected to the ANC national executive committee at the 2007 Polokwane conference.
But unlike the many who fled to the suburbs, Madikizela-Mandela remained in her home in Soweto to retain the bonds and camaraderie with ordinary people, especially the most disadvantaged in the squatter camps. In the words of ANC stalwart Tokyo Sexwale, she remained the champion of the “great unwashed”.
Her criticism of the direction the ANC was taking was not limited to the negotiated settlement. She sided publicly with the Treatment Action Campaign demanding anti-retrovirals for people suffering HIV-Aids. Her proximity to arguably the greatest leader of the ANCYL, and now the EFF, Julius Malema, is testament to a life lived with conviction.
Her public efforts to encourage a reconciliation between the ANC and EFF were consistent with the efforts she made to prevent a stand-off between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma at the Polokwane conference in 2007 which, she feared – and rightly – would precipitate a split.
How we will miss you, Mama uNomzamo when the movement you sacrificed to preserve is plagued by pornographic factionalism that knows no limit.
How we will miss your humility and warmth when hubris and self-importance ravages your beloved organisation.
And mostly we will miss your belief in self-determination for our people, when the sophists that have taken control of your ANC believe in the supremacy of the ideas of those that dehumanised our people.
“I am not sorry. I will never be sorry. I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything.” These were your defiant words to the contemptible charlatans who sought to smear your reputation. Ungqatso ulufezile, imizamo emihle uyenzile lala ngoxolo (you’ve played your part, you’ve done your best, rest in peace) Ngutyana, Msuthu, Msengetshe, Phapha, Makhal'endlovu, Nqwanda, Hala, Malandelwa yintombi ithi ndizeke noba awunankomo. Rest in perfect peace Mama weSizwe esimnyama!
Andile Lungisa is a former deputy president of the ANCYL, president of the Pan African Youth Union, PEC member of the EC ANC and councillor in Nelson Mandela Metro