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Winnie Mandela, one of South Africa's most visible and ...)
Winnie Mandela, one of South Africa's most visible and articulate apartheid foes, spent many years as a "banned" person in her own country. She lived under virtual house arrest and was forbidden to address public gatherings or meet with more than one person at a time. She endured a forced separation of 27 years from her husband, Nelson Mandela. Here, in interviews and letters, she tells the story of her life and political development.
(Editora Política. La Habana. 1986. 18 cm. 280 p. Encuader...)
Editora Política. La Habana. 1986. 18 cm. 280 p. Encuadernación en tapa blanda de editorial ilustrada.. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario. Cubierta deslucida.
491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 (Modern African Writing Series)
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On a freezing winters night, a few hours before dawn o...)
On a freezing winters night, a few hours before dawn on May 12, 1969, South African security police stormed the Soweto home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, activist and wife of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, and arrested her in the presence of her two young daughters, then aged nine and ten.
Rounded up in a group of other antiapartheid activists under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, designed for the security police to hold and interrogate people for as long as they wanted, she was taken away. She had no idea where they were taking her or what would happen to her children. For Winnie Mandela, this was the start of 491 days of detention and two trials.
Forty-one years after Winnie Mandelas release on September 14, 1970, Greta Soggot, the widow of one of the defense attorneys from the 1969?70 trials, handed her a stack of papers that included a journal and notes she had written while in detention, most of the time in solitary confinement. Their reappearance brought back to Winnie vivid and horrifying memories and uncovered for the rest of us a unique and personal slice of South Africas history.
491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 shares with the world Winnie Mandelas moving and compelling journal along with some of the letters written between several affected parties at the time, including Winnie and Nelson Mandela, himself then a prisoner on Robben Island for nearly seven years.
Readers will gain insight into the brutality she experienced and her depths of despair, as well as her resilience and defiance under extreme pressure. This young wife and mother emerged after 491 days in detention unbowed and determined to continue the struggle for freedom.
he person the world knows as Winnie Mandela began life as Nomzamo ("she who strives, " "she who has to undergo trials") Winifred (Winnie) Madikizela, daughter of Columbus and Gertrude Madikizela. She was born on September 26, 1936 in the village of eMbongweni, Bizana, Pondoland, in what is now South Africa's Eastern Cape Province. She was born the fourth out of eight children, which included seven sisters and a brother. Her parents were both teachers. Columbus was a history teacher and a headmaster, and Gertrude was a domestic science teacher.
Both of her parents were mission-educated, English-speaking teachers: her father taught at the local eM-bongweni Primary School and represented Eastern Pondoland in the territorial council which arbitrated Pondo law and custom; her mother, while still single, taught domestic science. She died when Mandela was nine.
Education
Through a combination of curiosity, intelligence, determination, and the financial support she received from family members and sponsors, Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela completed primary school and Shawbury High School, where she distinguished herself as a person of exceptional personal and leadership qualities. In 1953 she was admitted to the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work and left the Transkei to reside at the American Board Mission's Helping Hand Hostel for women in central Johannesburg. When she completed her degree in 1955 she was the first black professional social worker in South Africa. She turned down a scholarship for further study in the United States in order to take up a challenging career in medical social welfare at the Baragwaneth Hospital in Johannesburg, where one of her boarding house roommates, Adelaide Tsukudu, worked as a staff nurse.
Career
Mandela was then on trial along with 156 other people in the now infamous "treason trial" lasting from August 1958 to March 29, 1961. It is from this period that Winnie Madikizela's devotion to the welfare of ordinary people matured from efforts to help people cope with the extreme hardship of their lives to efforts to challenge and transform the governmental structures and social relations which created and reproduced hardship for the majority population.
The Mandelas, both well educated and of prominent social backgrounds, shared respect for popular society, tolerance of a broad range of religious and political views, and a firm commitment to turn their relative privilege and experience to the service of the majority population.
Nelson Mandela had long devoted himself to the goal of dismantling the oppressive state structures which contributed to the de-humanization and impoverishment of South African peoples through his political involvement in the African National Congress Youth League. His family shared his commitment, and, like thousands of other South Africans, suffered pain, separation, incarceration, poverty, and daily indignities for that commitment. Winnie Mandela's first encounters with South Africa's security police also began in 1958.
The government extended "pass" legislation to African women. African men had long been required to carry a pass (an identification and employment history document) which constrained their ability to sell their labor and skills to best advantage. This forced them to labor and live on terms most favorable to the dominant white population. When pass legislation was extended to African women, who already labored in the least attractive and lowest paid jobs, the women took to the streets by the thousands to protest this additional burden. The Women's League of the African National Congress naturally embraced the issue.
In October 1958 Winnie Mandela was among the more than one thousand women arrested in anti-pass demonstrations. The two weeks she spent in prison for her participation proved a mere hint of the draconian treatment the South African Nationalist government had in store for her and her comrades over the next decades. She lost her job and income as a social worker, subsequent to her arrest.
In 1960, after South African Police fired on a group of people who were protesting the pass laws nationwide and international protests against apartheid prompted the government to declare a state of emergency. Thousands were arrested and detained. After the treason trial where Nelson Mandela and his co-defendants were found not guilty ended, the Mandelas and their two young daughters were able to have a semblance of family life spent between March and December.
In 1962 Nelson Mandela went into hiding to continue his leadership within the then banned ANC. He was subsequently apprehended, tried, and in 1964 sentenced to life imprisonment for his political activities.
From day to day Winnie Mandela never knew when police would tear her away from her terrified children and jail her on some triviality. She finally made the painful decision to send her children to boarding school in Swaziland so that they could live and learn unharrassed by the South African government. Although she had visitation rights she was unable to have physical contact with her husband for the next 22 years. Her indomitable spirit kept his name in the public eye and never allowed anyone to forget the injustice being done to Nelson Mandela.
After 1962 Winnie Mandela was subjected to a virtually uninterrupted series of legal orders (so-called banning orders) which prevented her from living, working, and socializing like any other ordinary person. She was prohibited from publishing or addressing more than one person at a time, subjected to house arrest, incarcerated in solitary confinement, terrorized by police harassment and arbitrary arrest, and on May 17, 1977, she was seized from her home in the Orlando section of Soweto and forced to reside in the black township outside the rural town of Brandfort in the distant Orange Free State.
The so-called banishment order separated her from friends, family, and her livelihood. Despite her isolation in Brandfort, Mandela soon bridged the social and physical barriers meant to contain her creative energy. With the monetary and emotional support she received from international sympathizers and the trust she soon built among the Brandfort community, she initiated social welfare programs and continued to politicize the township population.
She consistently exploited the limited financial support and physical protection she received as an internationally known political figure to continue to advance the political goals of South Africa's majority population. The continuous and escalating level of persecution suffered by Winnie Mandela was one side of the coin. Her unwavering commitment to justice, effectiveness as a leader in the struggle for social justice, and refusal to be bullied into submission was the flip side.
In August 1985 Winnie Mandela's "prison cell" in Brandfort was firebombed. No one was charged with the crime, but the shocking attack convinced Mandela to defy the government and return to her home in Soweto. After her return Mandela's defiance continued unabated-she ignored her banning order and spoke at public gatherings and to the international media. The government chose not to meet her defiance with the fullness of police action possible under law.
In 1988, her controversial Mandela United Football Club, a group of young men who lived in her newly built house in Soweto and acted as her bodyguards, caused many other antiapartheid groups to distance themselves from her. These young men were implicated in robberies, assaults and murders in the Soweto area, and Mandela's neighbors accused them of intimidation and extortion. Matters came to a head when two club members were charged by the police with the kidnapping and beating of three African youths, as well as the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi.
Moeketsi was a young leader whose 1500-member "children's army" opposed Mandela's club and its tactics. Mandela claimed that the boy died of beatings and sexual abuse incurred at the Methodist church where he had been previously hiding out. Even so, Mandela's bodyguards came under suspicion in two other murders and South Africa's largest organizations. The Congress of South African Trade Unions and the United Democratic Front both issued statements in 1989 disassociating themselves from Mandela and her entourage.
Mandela finally disbanded her bodyguards and had the club dismantled after pressure from the ANC and her husband. Mandela's once unblemished image was tarnished in the eyes of her people and it wasn't until Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990 that she was somewhat rehabilitated. Nelson Mandela stood by his wife when she was appointed head of the ANC's social welfare department and eventually given a cabinet post in his new government. Her legal troubles continued however.
She was ordered to stand trial for the death of Moeketsi when the three surviving youths of the Soweto kidnapping testified in the trial of Jerry Richardson-who was convicted of murdering Moeketsi-that Mandela took part in the beatings. The judge assigned to Mandela's case described her testimony as "vague, evasive, equivocal, inconsistent, unconvincing and brazenly untruthful". She was convicted on the charge of accessory after-the-fact in the assaults and sentenced to six months in prison. Freed on bail, Mandela was permitted to appeal her conviction, a process that would take years.
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 June 2007, the Canadian High Commission in South Africa declined to grant Winnie Mandela a visa to travel to Toronto, Canada, where she was scheduled to attend a gala fundraising concert organised by arts organisation MusicaNoir, which included the world premiere of The Passion of Winnie, an opera based on her life. When the ANC announced the election of its National Executive Committee on 21 December 2007, Madikizela-Mandela placed first with 2845 votes.
Madikizela-Mandela secured fifth place on the ANC's electoral list for the 2009 general election, behind party president and current President of South Africa Jacob Zuma, former President of South Africa Kgalema Motlanthe, Deputy President of South Africa Baleka Mbete, and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. An article in The Observer suggested her position near the top of the list indicated that the party's leadership saw her as a valuable asset in the election with regard to solidifying support among the party's grassroots and the poor.
In 2010, Madikizela-Mandela was interviewed by Nadira Naipaul. In the interview, she attacked her ex-husband, claiming that he had "let blacks down", that he was only "wheeled out to collect money", and that he is "nothing more than a foundation". She further attacked his decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize with FW De Klerk. Among other things, she reportedly claimed Mandela was no longer "accessible" to her daughters. She referred to Archbishop Tutu, in his capacity as the head of the Truth and Reconciliation commission, as a "cretin".
The interview attracted media attention, and the ANC announced that it would ask her to explain her comments regarding Nelson Mandela. On 14 March 2010, a statement was issued on behalf of Winnie Mandela claiming that the interview was a fabrication.
Achievements
She chose service to needy people and devotion of her energy and skill to the struggle for equality and justice for all people in South Africa. After her marriage to Nelson Mandela in 1958 she suffered harassment, imprisonment, and periodic banishment for her continuing involvement in that struggle.
In January 2018, the University Council and University Senate of Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda, the top-most academic and administrative organs of the university, approved the award of an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree to Winnie Nomzano Madikizela-Mandela, in recognition of her fight against apartheid in South Africa.
In 1997 she was re-elected as president of the African National Congress Women's League, much to the dismay of the ANC leadership. Mandela remained popular among the poorest of the and maintained her home in Soweto, just a few moments away from the Orlando Museum House.
Views
Madikizela-Mandela criticised the anti-immigrant violence in May–June 2008 that began in Johannesburg and spread throughout the country, and blamed the government's lack of suitable housing provisions for the sentiments behind the riots. She apologised to the victims of the riots and visited the Alexandra township. She offered her home as shelter for an immigrant family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She warned that the perpetrators of the violence could strike at the Gauteng train system.
Quotations:
Her reputation was damaged by such rhetoric as that displayed in a speech she gave in Munsieville on 13 April 1986, where she 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. "
Connections
The Mandelas were married in a Methodist service in the Transkei on June 19, 1958, returning after the celebrations to live in Mandela's home in the Soweto township outside Johannesburg in compliance with legal constraints imposed in connection with the "treason trial" litigation.
Winnie Mandela waged a determined fight to raise and educate their daughters, Zenani (Zeni) born in 1959 and Zindziswa (Zinzi) born in 1960, and to earn the family's living on her own.
In April 1992, Nelson and Winnie Mandela agreed to separate after 33 years of marriage. During the separation, Mandela continued to be plagued with scandal and in April 1995 resigned her cabinet post. In 1996, a judge granted Nelson Mandela a divorce, feeling that the couple would never be reconciled. After the divorce, Mandela created a museum out of the Orlando West Soweto home where she and President Mandela lived.
