I walked out of secret interview after she raged
Winnie Mandela was beautiful and brave, but she was also arrogant, self-important, manipulative and corrupt.
I interviewed her twice when I was living in South Africa. But I believe the most telling assessment of her was from her ex-husband Nelson, who I met on several occasions.
He looked me in the eye and said: “I had to divorce her because of the things she had done.
“I blame myself for how she turned out – after all, I was unable to be with her for 27 years.”
I have no photos of me with Winnie, for a good reason. During the apartheid years I slipped into the back garden of her tiny home for a secret, illegal interview.
Soon, though, she got annoyed with my questioning, shouting: “You’re a white man so you cannot understand anything.” I must be the only journalist who walked out of an interview with her.
Years later I was with a television team invited to her new, much grander home. She was asked: “Are you making a comeback?”
“Comeback?” she retorted. “I’ve never been away.”
Sadly, by then she was damaged goods.
She became referred to as Mugger of the Nation for good reason.
Her relationships with FIERCE Winnie in 1977 a string of younger men continued even after Nelson was released.
A few months after she was convicted in 1991 for involvement in the disappearance of 14-year-old boy Stompie, who she had accused of being a spy for the South African police, I spent a day with Winnie’s former driver.
He took me to the site where he said he had driven with members of the notorious thugs who had become her henchmen, ludicrously named the Mandela United Football Club.
The driver told me they had brought several dead and dying young men and adolescents to a mineshaft entrance and pushed them down it.
As it was more than a mile to the bottom there was no way for anyone to find any remains. It was chilling to hear his story.
Winnie continued to cultivate her radical image, which gave her a fanatical following.
There is no doubt some of her defiant resistance to the evils of apartheid in the early years deserved great praise, but her legacy will always be ruined by her behaviour in later life.