When the news of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s death hit the internet on April 2, the eulogies immediately started to pour in in droves, in honour of the wonderfully exceptional woman who fought valiantly beside her husband for the dismounting of apartheid in South Africa and willingly ‘offered her life for the course of her black brothers and sisters. None of the people eulogizing her bothered to mention the sides of her life that are dark and bloodied and which reflect the opposite of what she so gallantly fought for – freedom to exist irrespective of race.
Winnie Mandela passed away at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa after a long illness, for which she had been in and out of hospital since the start of the year. She was 81 years old and according to the family spokesman who spoke to CNN, her death “came as a shock to us”.
Winnie was married to Nelson Mandela, foremost South African anti-apartheid activist, for 38 years, 27 of which he spent in jail on an Island near Cape Town. And in 1996, two years after Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black President, they divorced. Their marriage birthed two girls.
Current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who described her as a mother of the nation and the voice for the oppressed and dispossessed, has announced that a memorial service will be held in her honour on April 11 followed by a ‘national funeral’ on April 14.
A legacy of controversy
In May 1991, Justice Michael S. Stegmann found Winnie Mandela guilty of kidnapping and being an accessory to the assaults, imposed consecutive sentences of five years for kidnapping and one year on the accessory conviction.
A New York Times report at the time reads:
“The sentences stunned spectators in the courtroom, some of whom expected Mrs. Mandela to get a suspended sentence. But her lawyer immediately filed an appeal, postponing for months the prospect that Mrs. Mandela will actually go to prison. And there has been speculation that President F. W. de Klerk may yet step in and pardon her in order not to jeopardize proposed negotiations on the nation’s future with Mr. Mandela and the African National Congress.”
During a speech in Munsieville on 13 April 1986, Winnie Mandela endorsed the practice of necklacing (burning people alive using tyres and petrol) by saying:
“With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.”
Further tarnishing her reputation were accusations by her bodyguard, Jerry Musivuzi Richardson, that she had ordered kidnapping and murder.
On 29 December 1988, Richardson, who was coach of the so-called Mandela United Football Club (MUFC), which acted as Mrs Mandela’s personal security detail, abducted 14-year-old James Seipei (also known as Stompie Moeketsi) and three other youths from the home of a Methodist minister, Rev. Paul Verryn, claiming she had the youths taken to her home because she suspected the reverend was sexually abusing them. The four were beaten to get them to admit to having had sex with the minister. Seipei was accused of being an informer, and his body was later found in a field with stab wounds to the throat on 6 January 1989.
Mrs. Mandela did not deny that the four were taken to her home but said she was absent in the Orange Free State when it happened. She said she returned home two days later but was unaware that they had been assaulted.
In 1988, her home was burned by residents of Soweto, possibly as retaliation for the actions of the Mandela United Football Club.
In 1991, she was acquitted of all but the kidnapping. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal.
The final report of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, issued in 1998, found “Ms Winnie Madikizela Mandela politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the MUFC” and that she “was responsible, by omission, for the commission of gross violations of human rights.”
In 1992, she was accused of ordering the murder of Dr Abu-Baker Asvat, a family friend who had examined Seipei at Mandela’s house, after Seipei had been abducted but before he had been killed. Mandela’s role was later probed as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in 1997. She was said to have paid the equivalent of $8,000 and supplied the firearm used in the killing, which took place on 27 January 1989. The hearings were later adjourned amid claims that witnesses were being intimidated on Winnie Mandela’s orders.
Fraudulent charge
On 24 April 2003, Winnie Mandela was convicted on 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft, and her broker, Addy Moolman, was convicted on 58 counts of fraud and 25 of theft. Both had pleaded not guilty.
The charges related to money taken from loan applicants’ accounts for a funeral fund, but from which the applicants did not benefit. Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison. Shortly after the conviction, she resigned from all leadership positions in the ANC, including her parliamentary seat and the presidency of the ANC Women’s League.
In July 2004, an appeal judge of the Pretoria High Court ruled that “the crimes were not committed for personal gain”. The judge overturned the conviction for theft, but upheld the one for fraud, handing her a three years and six months suspended sentence.
In her life and, now, in her death, Winnie Mandela is popularly regarded as one of Africa’s greatest and bravest women in history; evident in the fact that she was willing to go the extra mile for the sake of freedom. She is regarded as a woman who stood when men cowered.
