Winnie Mandela has died

April 2, 2018 7:50 AM

Anti-apartheid activist and later human rights criminal Winnie Mandela has died at 81 (SL NYT obit)
posted by stillmoving (17 comments total)

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posted by lazaruslong at 9:45 AM on April 2, 2018

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posted by numaner at 10:14 AM on April 2, 2018

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posted by Foosnark at 10:21 AM on April 2, 2018

A complicated legacy.

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posted by OHenryPacey at 10:39 AM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

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posted by Duffington at 11:42 AM on April 2, 2018

Yup, very complicated. Back in the 1980s, she was in the news all the time. A sad ending.

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posted by Melismata at 12:19 PM on April 2, 2018

I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but have heard good things about this PBS documentary about her.

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posted by Emmy Rae at 1:00 PM on April 2, 2018

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posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:00 PM on April 2, 2018

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posted by Joey Michaels at 6:49 PM on April 2, 2018

Oh WOW do I find the framing of this post offensive! Dr. Wandia Njoya, who studies pan-African history, contextualized the NY Times obituary with those of other "complicate" figures (twitter thread). It's worth thinking about why the metafilter thread for her death is framed like this, and compare that to the framing of those other complex peoples' obituaries. Here are a few things that provide another perspective, mostly from the blog Africa is a Country.

From French Journalist Stephen Smith, via AfricaIsACountry:

“… if any one person can stand in for the country, it’s surely Winnie, half ‘mother of the nation’ and half township gangsta, deeply ambiguous, scarred and disfigured by the struggle.”

Winnie Mandela was a lot of things. She said, "The freedom of this country was attained by the masses of this country. It was attained by the children who gave their lives in 1976, who faced machine guns with stones and dustbin lids. It was attained by women who were left to fend for their families. They fought the enemy! We are the ones who fought the enemy physically, who went out to face their bullets. The leaders were cushioned behind bars. They don't know. They never engaged the enemy on the battlefield..."

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Africa's First Lady, by Sisonke Msimang

For a younger generation that has grown up in post-apartheid South Africa, Winnie Mandela is an iconic figure, yet one with whom they are little acquainted. Some will know that her marriage to Nelson’s ended in a nasty divorce shortly after his release from jail in 1992. Others will be aware that in the 1980s she was known for her firebrand politics. They will know she spent three decades fighting for her husband’s release, and that she is known as the Mother of the Nation, but they may be unfamiliar with all but the outlines of her battles against the apartheid state.

Many will not know that she was a qualified social worker in a time when few African women were educated. They will not know that rumors circulated in the early years that is was she who had betrayed her husband to the police – even from within the ANC. They may not know that she was accused of cheating on him; that in the first decade of his incarceration when she was prohibited from seeing him all but once, they suggested that she was unfaithful. These allegations of course would never have been made against a man.

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The Return of Winnie, by Joy Shan

Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the beautiful wife of Nelson Mandela during his 27 years in prison, has always polarized the public. Those who love her call her Mama Winnie or Mother of the Nation; they admire her charisma and revolutionary will. Forced into the political spotlight when her husband was arrested, Madikizela-Mandela stoked the flames of anti-apartheid resistance while many ANC members were imprisoned or exiled. But many others fear and vilify her. In 1997, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found Madikizela-Mandela guilty of multiple counts of torture, kidnapping, and murder. Her name was most tarnished by the death of Stompie Seipei, the 14-year-old boy killed by her bodyguards. Madikizela-Mandela’s erasure as a leader corresponded with her husband’s elevation as a saint. While Nelson Mandela’s image was printed on t-shirts and bank notes, his message of peace disseminated in biopics and memoirs, Madikizela-Mandela’s brand of justice was too controversial to market. In her, some people (especially in the mainstream white press) saw a woman whose politics were fueled by hate, and as such she had no place in the mythology of a rainbow South Africa—a nation that had, by all official accounts, reconciled with its past.

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A review of the documentary Winnie, by Sisonke Msimang (currently on Netflix)

There are scenes in Winnie that will be familiar to viewers – not because they have seen Mandela’s fury in full flight before – but because it is evocative of the rage Lebohang Mabuya demonstrated when she challenged an obnoxious white racist in the Spur video that went viral earlier this year. Some of the most compelling scenes in the film, involve Winnie’s raw rage and her absolute fearlessness. In one scene, she physically pushes a white policewoman and berates her for trying to take away her grandchild. Watching her chastise white male officers who are attempting to arrest her – it is impossible not to recognize Winnie as the forbearer to this generation’s impatience with authority. And it is this the film captures so well – the ferocious, unapologetic spirit of a woman who refused to back down not simply towards the end of apartheid, but for the thirty years that preceded the transition to democracy.

posted by ChuraChura at 8:55 PM on April 2, 2018 [22 favorites]

Thanks, ChuraChura, I suspected there was more to the story . . .
posted by filthy_prescriptivist at 9:03 PM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Here is a twitter thread with clips from the Winnie documentary that specifically focus on the murder of Stompie Steipei.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:17 PM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thank you ChuraChura, both for the links and the calling out. The original post framing could have come straight out of Fox News. Winnie Mandela deserves better from the Blue.
posted by happyroach at 11:35 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

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posted by filtergik at 5:30 AM on April 3, 2018

Thanks for the better perspective, ChuraChura. I'd come back here after seeing some pretty nasty stuff about her in other places, looking for something which could bring into view how utterly evil and totalitarian the apartheid regime was, so it's very good to be reminded that actually, they were the baddies.

My memory of Winnie is of being the first person I came across in the news who had power to set an agenda who wasn't a white man or (remembers existence of Margaret Thatcher) given power through a white male institution.

She fought hard and with huge courage and sacrifice. It's a legacy for those who she knew to be proud of, and for us to be inspired by. If there are cautionary tales about if and when she compromised that legacy, that should come second.
posted by ambrosen at 11:00 PM on April 3, 2018

I'm glad to find this BBC article, too:

"Having read and listened to the many comments since her passing on Monday, it became clear to me that some people either do not know history or they have collective amnesia.
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Such people seem to have forgotten the trauma Mrs Madikizela-Mandela experienced at the hands of those who enforced some of the most racist and sexist laws the world has ever seen.

However, her character, sheer strength and willpower could not be suppressed.

In January 1985, US Senator Edward Kennedy visited her in Brandfort, describing her as someone who was "very courageous and was very concerned for her country"."
posted by ambrosen at 11:16 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

A . for Stompie Moeketsi and her other victims. Many people experienced the same hell as her, they didn't come out of it inventing something evil like necklacing.
posted by CyborgHag at 6:46 AM on April 4, 2018