Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela OLS MP (born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela; 26 September 1936[1] – 2 April 2018),[2] also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist, Mother Of The Nation,[3] politician, and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003,[4] and from 2009 until her death,[5] and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation".[6][7]
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Position established
2 April 2018 (aged 81)
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Fourways Memorial Park Cemetery
- Politician
- social worker
- anti-apartheid activist
Born to a Xhosa royal family in Bizana, and a qualified social worker, she married anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in 1958; they remained married for 38 years and had two children together. In 1963, after Mandela was imprisoned following the Rivonia Trial, she became his public face during the 27 years he spent in jail. During that period, she rose to prominence within the domestic anti-apartheid movement. Madikizela-Mandela was detained by apartheid state security services on various occasions, tortured,[8] subjected to banning orders, and banished to a rural town, and she spent several months in solitary confinement.[9]
In the mid-1980s, Madikizela-Mandela exerted a "reign of terror", and was "at the centre of an orgy of violence"[10][11] in Soweto, which led to condemnation by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa,[12][13][14][10] and a rebuke by the ANC in exile.[15][16] During this period, her home was burned down by residents of Soweto.[17] The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established by Nelson Mandela's government to investigate human rights abuses found Madikizela-Mandela to have been "politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the Mandela United Football Club", her security detail.[6][18] Madikizela-Mandela endorsed the necklacing of alleged police informers and apartheid government collaborators, and her security detail carried out kidnapping, torture, and murder,[19][20][10] most notoriously the killing of 14-year-old Stompie Sepei[6][21][22] whose kidnapping she was convicted of.[3]
Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990, and the couple separated in 1992; their divorce was finalised in March 1996. She visited him during his final illness.[23] As a senior ANC figure, she took part in the post-apartheid ANC government, although she was dismissed from her post amid allegations of corruption.[11] In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of theft and fraud, and she temporarily withdrew from active politics before returning several years later.[4][5]
Early life and education[edit]
Madikizela-Mandela's Xhosa name was Nomzamo. She was born in the village of Mbhongweni,[24]
Bizana, Pondoland, in what is now the Eastern Cape province. She was the fifth of nine children, seven sisters and a brother. Her parents, Columbus and Gertrude, who had a white father and Xhosa mother,[25] were both teachers. Columbus was a history teacher and a headmaster, and Gertrude was a domestic science teacher. Madikizela-Mandela went on to become the head girl at her high school in Bizana.[26][27]
Upon leaving school, she went to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work.[28] She earned a degree in social work in 1956, and decades later earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand.[29]
She held a number of jobs in various parts of what was then the Bantustan of Transkei; including with the Transkei government, living at various points of time at Bizana, Shawbury and Johannesburg. Her first job was as a social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.[30]
Withdrawal from politics: 2003–2007[edit]
In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela offered to act as a human shield prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[97] Also in 2003, she helped defuse a hostage situation at Wits University, where a student who was in arrears with fees took a staff member hostage at knifepoint.[98][99][100]
On 24 April 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted on 435 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.[101] 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.[102]
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.[103]
In popular culture[edit]
Mandela was portrayed by Alfre Woodard in the 1987 HBO TV movie, Mandela. Woodard earned both a CableACE Award and an NAACP Image Award for her performance, as did costar Danny Glover, who portrayed Nelson Mandela.[121]
Tina Lifford played her in the 1997 TV film Mandela and de Klerk. Sophie Okonedo portrayed her in the BBC drama Mrs Mandela, first broadcast on BBC Four on 25 January 2010.[122]
Jennifer Hudson played her in Winnie Mandela, directed by Darrell Roodt, released in Canada by D Films on 16 September 2011. Roodt, Andre Pieterse, and Paul L. Johnson based the film's script on Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob's biography, Winnie Mandela: A Life.[123] The Creative Workers Union of South Africa opposed the choice of Hudson in the title role, saying the use of foreign actors to tell the country's stories undermined efforts to develop the national film industry.[124][125] Though the performances of Hudson and Terrance Howard, who portrayed Nelson Mandela, earned praise from many critics, the film was a critical and commercial failure.
In 2007, an opera based on her life called The Passion of Winnie was produced in Canada; however, she was declined a visa to attend its world premiere and associated gala fundraising concert.[126]
Mandela was again portrayed in the 2013 film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom by actress Naomie Harris (British actor Idris Elba played Nelson Mandela). On viewing the film, Madikizela-Mandela told Harris it was "the first time she felt her story had been captured on film". Gugulethu okaMseleku, writing in The Guardian, stated that the film had returned Madikizela-Mandela to her rightful place, recognising her role in "the struggle" that, "for South African women ... was more fundamental than her husband's."[127]
Honours and awards[edit]
In 1985, Mandela won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award along with fellow activists Allan Boesak and Beyers Naudé for their human rights work in South Africa.[128] She received a Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1988.[129]
In January 2018, the University Council and University Senate of Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, approved the award of an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree to Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, in recognition of her fight against apartheid in South Africa.[130][131]
In 2021, the Mbizana Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape was officially renamed the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Local Municipality.[132] The town of Brandfort in the Free State was also officially renamed as Winnie Mandela.[133]
In 2022, the section of the R562 road connecting Midrand with Olifantsfontein, was renamed from Olifantsfontein Road to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Road by the City of Ekurhuleni in Gauteng.[134]