Winnie Mandela: One of the great personalities of our times

On April 2, 2018, anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie Mandela passed away, after a period of prolonged illness in South Africa. Known for her fiery personality and courage, Mrs Mandela’s death has brought to a close a period in South Africa’s history defined by struggle, racism and ethnic insecurity, and inequality.
Side by side with her husband Nelson Mandela, Winnie struggled against discrimination, marginalization, and victimization of South Africa’s blacks by white minority oppressors. Even after her husband was imprisoned, she remained committed to the struggle for an end to the dastardly system of apartheid, even before she became the symbol of resistance and the face of hope for millions of black South Africans.

While it was true that Mrs Mandela was many different things to her family, to Africa and to the world, she was indeed a patriot and revolutionary woman, who did all that was necessary to support her husband’s vision and passion for equality and respect for all the races and people in South Africa.
In fact, CNN described her as an “anti-apartheid crusader.” The BBC called her an “anti-apartheid campaigner.” Some newspapers described her merely as “controversial.” The Rev. Jesse Jackson said she was the “face of hope and courage.” For years after her husband’s imprisonment, she was the unfortunate face of a just cause. The kindest description was “the former wife of Nelson Mandela.”
It is true that Mrs Mandela had a complex and unpredictable personality. After all, she had seen the world in her own colours. She did not forgive easily, and she was very suspicious of whites. And the world saw how unforgiving she could be back in 1993 when she even scolded her ex- for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. De Klerk, who had overturned decades of apartheid and led the white National Party to seek a partnership for black-and-white peace. “I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel with his jailer de Klerk,” she said. “Hand in hand they went. Do you think de Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed, and our struggle was not a flash in the pan, it was bloody to say at the least. We had given rivers of blood.
“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.”
But at Mr. Mandela’s funeral in 2013, standing at the coffin, she imposed herself on the rites as the grieving widow, even though Mr. Mandela had married again.
Mrs Mandela did not believe that enough was done or accomplished over the past decades in dealing with South Africa’s race problem, but she was satisfied that progress was taking place and blacks were reasserting themselves as dominant players in the country’s socio-economic politics . When she died, South Africa’s politics was reaching a precipice, with attacks on white farmers increasing and rumblings in the parliament about expropriating more white-owned land. Political events in South Africa are trending Winnie’s way.
But the moving finger writes, and history is not written in permanent ink.
That aside, She suffered greatly at the hands of the white minority Government, especially by the fact she was deliberately detained by the authorities every time her children, who were forced to live abroad, came home to visit her. But she met the brutality of racial segregation with fire.
Recall, too, that by the time her husband was set free, Mrs Mandela had been battered and bruised by the apartheid system, and its ugly scars etched deep. In later years, her reputation became tainted legally and politically, and few were surprised that their marriage did not survive.
But as anti-apartheid activist Mosioua Lekota noted in her defence: “Those who did nothing under apartheid never made mistakes.”
As put by retired archbishop and Nobel laureate Mr Desmond Tutu she remains the “defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid” and someone whose “courageous defiance was deeply inspirational…to generations of activists”.
Winnie Mandela will be remembered as one of the great personalities of our times. She was an inspiration to women of all racial backgrounds as an enduring example of resistance to tyranny. And also to men everywhere who fight against oppression of the weak by the strong.