Winnie Madikizela – Hardcore revolutionary
ONE OF my friends called me last week to lament Winnie Madikizela’s death. And she made a confession. She hadn’t always admired Winnie. She’d disapproved of her for breaking up Nelson Mandela’s marriage to Evelyn Mase. What?
Winnie Madikizela was standing at a bus stop in Soweto minding her own business. Mandela spotted her and im skin ketch fire. I’m sure he knew he was married. But that didn’t stop him. Mandela was 39 years old and Winnie only 22. He could easily have been her father.
I suppose Mandela was having an early mid-life crisis. He died at 95, so his mid-life was still eight and a half years away. But, of course, he wouldn’t have known this. What he did know was that Winnie was a beautiful young woman. And he had to have her.
He must have been quite charming. The attraction was mutual. Mandela did full Winnie eye. She agreed to have lunch with him the following week. A year later they were married and Evelyn was history. How can it be reasonable to blame Winnie entirely for mashing up Mandela’s marriage?
No self-respecting man can convincingly claim that is tek a woman tek im weh from his wife or girlfriend. A man is not a piece of cheese that a rat can pounce on and devour. Admittedly, some men are quite cheesy – as in cheap and of low quality. And they tend to attract a certain kind of ratty woman who will gnaw at them until they give in.
But we shouldn’t blame just the woman even if she set trap for the man. Some men walk into the trap with their eyes and fly wide open. They must take responsibility for their own actions. My friend did admit that she’d been unfair to Winnie. Over the years, she had learned to admire this heroic woman whose intellect, passion and political will had propelled her to the frontline of the epic battle to bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa.
UNEASY RECONCILIATION
Judging from the meanspirited obituaries that have been published in the Western press, it is obvious that, even in death, Winnie Madikizela remains a terrifying force that must be tamed. She was an uncompromising revolutionary who refused to bow to the demands of those who insisted on an uneasy reconciliation with the enemy. And she condemned even saintly Nelson Mandela for selling out.
In an interview published in the London Evening Standard on March 8, 2010, Winnie passes damning judgement: “‘Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary. But look what came out.’” Winnie expects us to see that Mandela was burnt out.
Winnie elaborates: “Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded”. The Mandelas’ marriage could not survive Winnie’s searing insight. And Winnie reclaimed her maiden name.
Very few, in and out of South Africa, want to reconcile themselves to Winnie Madikizela’s unpalatable truth. Nothing much has changed in the postapartheid dispensation. And Winnie has been demonised for refusing to pretend otherwise.
This headline from the Sydney Morning Herald is typical: “Winnie Mandela obituary: ‘Mother’ then ‘mugger’ of new South Africa”. Ed Cropley, writing from Johannesburg, unilaterally declares: “Hailed as mother of the ‘new’ South Africa, Winnie 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, Nelson Mandela, as he worked to forge a stable, pluralistic democracy from the racial division and oppression of apartheid.” See! Nelson was the nice guy and Winnie was the mugger. But the quotation marks around ‘new’ suggest that even Cropley knows that there’s nothing new about the ‘new’ South Africa.
‘IF SHE’D BEEN WHITE’
One of the few obituaries that unequivocally celebrate Winnie Madikizela’s exemplary life appeared in the UK Guardian. Afua Hirsch’s headline is truthful: “Winnie Mandela was a hero. If she’d been white, there would be no debate”. And, let me add, if she’d been male, no one would label her a “ruthless ideologue”.
Hirsch reminds us that Winnie “survived – during more than 35 years of apartheid – surveillance, threats, harassment, arrest and imprisonment, 491 days in solitary confinement and eight years in exile. The methods of torture used against her included, according to one account, denying her sanitary products so that she was found, in detention, covered in her own menstrual blood”.
That blood-cloth oppression would have broken a weaker spirit. But not Winnie’s! Like Amina of Nigeria and Yaa Asantewa of Ghana, Winnie belongs to that army of hardcore warrior women of Africa, who fought relentlessly for the liberation of their people from colonial domination. By any means necessary! Winnie Madikizela is dead. Long live her fearless spirit!