Andrew Kenny

Winnie Mandela, martyr and tyrant

Lest we forget:

Winnie Madikizela Mandela (1936 – 2018); Age: 81; Cause of death: illness

James “Stompie” Seipei (1974 – 1989); Age: 14; Cause of death: murder, throat slit

South Africa is in mourning over Winnie Madikizela Mandela who died on Monday. The official mood is of sadness and eulogy. The unofficial mood is quite different and rather confused. Any hard look at her life brings up all sorts of disturbing questions about her and about South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. The official message seems to be: “Don’t look too hard”.

Of course, Winnie Mandela endured many wrongs under the apartheid regime. She was held without trial and denied a family life as a result of her husband Nelson’s unfair imprisonment. She was also harassed and tormented by the government. In 1969, she suffered months and months of solitary confinement. In 1977, she was banished to the remote town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State. It is true that she showed great courage throughout these ordeals.

But this picture is not a complete one of Winnie Mandela, who was also convicted of kidnapping and fraud, and should have been tried for murder. She was a mother and a monster, a martyr and a tyrant, a rampaging megalomaniac posing as a selfless defender of the poor and the helpless.

Winnie Mandela was born in the Transkei in 1936. She became a social worker and did tireless and devoted work for the needy. She was of striking appearance and had a perfect sense of dress and colour. She married Nelson Mandela, 16 years older than her, in 1958.

In 1985, she returned to Soweto, the huge black township next to Johannesburg, and became a monster. Or did she reveal her inner monster? This was the time of the “People’s War”, when the ANC unleashed gangs of young thugs to terrorise people in the townships and make them “ungovernable”.

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