Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was good people; she endured mental and physical torture in stride
Monday April 09 2018
Anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela (left) and his wife Winnie salute a cheering crowd in Paarl upon Mandela's release from Victor Verster prison, on February 11, 1990. PHOTO | WALTER DHLADHLA | AFP
The little girl was almost unwanted. The father had had several daughters already, and, in a traditional African society anywhere on the continent, it was considered bad luck to have another girl. Her father wanted a boy; her mother wanted a boy; the whole clan wanted a boy.
But there she was, a tiny, little and apparently inconsequential girl, entering the household of Kokani Columbus Madikizela and his wife Nomathansanqa Gertrude Madikizela on the morning of September 26, 1934 in Idutywa village, in the district of Bizana, Transkei.
Who, among the Madikizelas, or, indeed in the whole of Bizana or Transkei, could ever have imagined that this little rural girl was destined for great things and that she would one day shake the apartheid regime with her inner toughness, serene resilience and quiet determination?
The woman who came to be known as Winnie Mandela — icon of the anti-apartheid struggle while her husband was in jail for 27 long years — started out as a very rural, very traditional girl, but ended up as one of the most recognisable faces on the world’s magazine covers and television talk-shows.
When Nelson Mandela went to prison in 1964 alongside his comrades such as Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and others of the Rivonia Treason “triallists” it was a critical moment for the struggle in South Africa.
The apartheid regime had consolidated its power in every political, economic, social and cultural aspects. The swoops and arrests around the Rivonia trial meant that those who were not caught in the police dragnets had to flee into exile, and this should have left a vacuum in the political movement.
But a vacuum did not happen, because Winnie happened. She practically took over the role of a one-woman Amazon army that kept the world informed that Mandela was alive, strong and unbending; that the man was waging his struggle even behind bars; that his spirit was strong as ever; and that he had unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the struggle.
At the same time, Winnie conveyed to Mandela news of the struggle inside the country, the diplomatic and political work carried out by anti-apartheid fighters in exile, such as Oliver Tambo and others, and the solidarity of the African and international communities.
Looking back, one feels the invisible hand of fate in the whole Winnie story.
She joined a social training college and immediately made friends with a slightly older girl, Adelaide Tsukudu, who was already dating Tambo, a prominent political lawyer and Mandela’s partner.
When Tambo and Tsukudu took Winnie on a drive in Johannesburg and found they had no money to buy a bite, they sighted Mandela in a café and Tsukudu asked him to pay while Tambo was introducing Mandela to Winnie.
Mandela, totally unbelieving, was astounded to learn that this was the same girl he had seen as he drove past the Baragwanath Hospital a few days earlier, and who had smitten him although he couldn’t make a U-turn to take a closer look.
Mandela was married, but his marriage was already unravelling. Although Winnie had had one or two fleeting liaisons – she had been unsuccessfully courted by Chief Kaiser Mantazima, future Bantustan leader, among others – it soon became clear the Mandela and Winnie’s was a romance and a partnership made by the ancestors.
The many years of separation could not have been without their effects, and by the time Mandela walked out into the sunshine on that iconic day in 1990, the Winnie he found, and with whom he took the first steps of freedom, could not have been exactly the same woman he had left behind in 1964, because the proverbial water under the bridge had flown in torrents sometimes.
Winnie had endured harassment, banishment, arrests, trials and taunts, and she sometimes fell prey to baser instincts.
But, though one may not feel that she was always on the right side of things, one has to accept that, whatever her faults, there are more pluses than minuses in her life.
When she and Mandela divorced a couple of years after his release, we felt we had been deprived of the continuation of a sweet story.
The people of South Africa are mourning a great woman, an icon, and I join them: Hamba Kahle, Ma Winnie! Go well!
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]