WINNIE MANDELA DIES AT AGE 81
From ‘Mother’ to ‘Mugger’ of S. Africa
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela and a prominent anti-apartheid activist whose reputation was sullied by a kidnapping and assault conviction in 1991, has died at the age of 81, South African media reported Monday.
She was married to Nelson Mandela from 1958 to 1996, but her husband spent most of their marriage behind bars for his own political activities, which made him a symbol of hope for millions of Africans seeking their rights in a country domi- nated by a racist white minority.
Winnie Mandela was hailed as mother of the new South Africa, but her legacy as an antiapartheid heroine was undone when she was revealed to be a ruthless ideologue prepared to sacrifice laws and lives in pursuit of revolution and revenge.
“What brutalized me so much was that I knew what it is to hate,” she once told a South African television interview.
The contradiction helped kill the Mandelas’ marriage and destroyed the esteem in which she was held by South Africans.
She remained steadfast and unbowed throughout the 27 years her husband was jailed, emerging to punch the air triumphantly in the clenched-fist salute of black power as she walked hand-in-hand with Nelson Mandela out of Cape Town’s Victor Vester prison in 1990.
It was a crowning moment that led four years later to the end of centuries of white domination in the majority-black nation when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.
But for his wife, the end of apartheid marked the start of a string of legal and political troubles. As evidence emerged of the brutality of her Soweto enforcers, the “Mandela United Football Club,” her nickname went from “Mother of the Nation” to “Mugger of the Nation.”
Blamed for ordering the killing of activist Stompie Seipei, who was found near her Soweto home with his throat cut, she was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping and assaulting the 14-yearold because he was suspected of being an informer.
Her six-year jail term was reduced on appeal to a fine.