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Winnie Madikizela Mandela |
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Winnie Madikizela Mandela
(b. September 26, 1936, Bizana, Pondoland, South Africa) South African
antiapartheid activist and advocate for women's rights worldwide.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is perhaps the most famous and controversial woman in South Africa. Known for years as one of the most outspoken members of the antiapartheid movement and the wife of the imprisoned African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela, she later made international headlines when she defended herself at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission against charges of murder and torture. Despite lingering questions about her role in late apartheid-era crimes, Madikizela-Mandela remains an influential figure in South African politics, and commands a strong following among the nation's poor.
Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela was the daughter of Colombus Madikizela,
a headmaster and cabinet minister in the Transkei homeland government, and
Gertrude Madikizela, a teacher. Winnie Madikizela lost her mother at age
nine, and afterward she and her seven sisters and their brother were raised
by aunts. At age 16 she left home to attend the Jan Hofmeyer School of
Social Work in Johannesburg, and after graduation in 1956 she became
Baragwanath Hospital's first African medical social worker.
As a student, Winnie Madikizela became acquainted with young ANC members.
Although initially she was not politically active, during her early career
as a social worker she became increasingly interested in both antiapartheid
and women's liberation causes. In 1957 she met Nelson Mandela, then the
ANC's Secretary-General; soon she joined the ANC Women's League and the
Federation of South African Women. Mandela was on trial for treason at the
time, but after a brief courtship he and Madikizela married in June 1958.
That same year, while pregnant with her first child, Madikizela-Mandela was
arrested while participating in a women's anti-pass law demonstration (see
pass laws). The arrest cost her her job. Madikizela-Mandela's first
daughter, Zenani, was born in 1959 and her second, Zindziswa, in 1960. The
following year the ANC was outlawed, and the Mandela family was forced
underground, seeking refuge on a farm in Rivonia. In 1962 they were found:
Nelson Mandela, who had been organizing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the
Nation), the ANC's armed wing, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
Nelson Mandela was sent to Robben Island, and Winnie Mandela was officially
confined to the Orlando district of Soweto. She was able to visit her
husband, but only with the government's permission. Winnie Mandela was
arrested in 1967 for ignoring her confinement orders and resisting arrest.
Later charged under the Suppression of Communism Act, she spent 17 months in
solitary confinement, and was then placed under house arrest.
Despite the restrictions on her movements, Mandela continued her work for
the banned ANC. She was particularly active in parents' groups, especially
after hundreds of schoolchildren were killed by security forces during the
1976 Soweto uprising. She arranged funerals and support groups to help the
aggrieved parents, and helped found the nationwide Black Parents'
Association. But within months of the uprising she was was again jailed
under the Internal Security Act, and subsequently banished to Brandfort, in
the Orange Free State.
Over the next several years Winnie Mandela was repeatedly arrested -
sometimes twice a day - for defying orders. On Christmas Day 1985, after
visiting her husband, she was pursued by police in a car chase, which was
captured on camera by the international press. Broadcast worldwide, Winnie
Mandela's persecution became emblematic of the harassment endured by black
South Africans under apartheid.
In February 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and Winnie Mandela
accompanied him as he walked out the door. Several months later, however,
she was charged with involvement in the 1988 kidnapping of four youth
activists and the murder of a fifth, the 14-year-old James (Stompie)
Moeketsi Seipei. Her bodyguards at the time, a group of young men known as
the Mandela Football Club, were charged with the murder. In 1991 Winnie
Mandela was found guilty of kidnapping and an accessory to assault, but
after appeal her six-year sentence was reduced to two, and suspended. That
year she was also elected to the ANC's National Executive. In April 1992 she
and her husband separated; they divorced in 1996.
In South Africa's first democratic election in 1994, Nelson Mandela was
elected president, and Winnie - now going by the name Madikezela-Mandela -
was elected to Parliament. Highly critical of the government, she was
unseated a year later, but remained popular, especially among South Africa's
poor, whom she claimed to champion. She was considered a strong candidate
for the country's deputy presidency in 1997, but her testimony before the
Truth and Reconciliation Committee that year failed to clear her name.
Lacking support within her own party, she pulled out of the race, but
continued to speak out against racism and economic injustice. In October
1997 she was a keynote speaker at the Million Woman March in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
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