Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie dies
Anti-apartheid activist was later convicted of fraud
JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-mandela, an anti-apartheid activist in her own right whose reputation was sullied by scandal, has died. She was 81.
Madikizela-mandela will be honored by a state funeral on April 14, preceded by an official memorial service on April 11, said President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday evening.
The woman many South Africans have described as the “Mother of the Nation” died “surrounded by her family and loved ones,” according to a statement released by Madikizela-mandela’s family.
Madikizela-mandela was the second of Mandela’s three wives, married to him from 1958 to 1996.
Mandela, who died in 2013, was imprisoned throughout most of their marriage, and Madikizela-mandela’s own activism against white minority rule led to her being jailed for months and placed under house arrest for years.
“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 recognizable faces,” the family said.
However, Madikizela-mandela’s political activism was marred by her conviction in 1991 for kidnapping and assault, for which she was fined.
As a parliamentarian after South Africa’s first all-race elections, she was convicted of fraud.
Still, Madikizela-mandela remained a venerated figure in the ruling African National Congress, which has led South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.
She continued to tell the party “exactly what is wrong and what is right at any time,” said senior ANC leader Gwede Mantashe.
Nobel laureate and former archbishop Desmond Tutu, a periodic critic of the ruling party, noted her passing by describing Madikizela-mandela as “a defining symbol” of the fight against apartheid.
U.N. Secretary-general Antonio Guterres called Madikizela-mandela “a leading figure at the forefront of the fight against apartheid in South Africa,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The young Winnie grew up in what is now Eastern Cape province and came to Johannesburg as the city’s first black female social worker.
Her research into the high infant mortality rate in a black township, which she linked to poverty caused by racism, first sparked her interest in politics.
In 1957, she met Nelson Mandela, an up-and-coming lawyer and anti-apartheid activist 18 years her senior, and they married a year later.
The Mandela marriage that survived decades of prison bars dissolved with a formal separation in 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela was released.