Happy Women’s History Month! As we carry over our celebration of Black excellence from last month, we are making sure to highlight Black women whose stories have been historically overshadowed by men. Today, we are going to tell you all about the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the wife of South Africa’s first Black president and freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela.
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While many know of Nelson Mandela’s famous fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime, which led to him being imprisoned for 27 years, not as many talk about Winnie, the woman who continued his fight while he was locked away and up until she died in 2018. So if you do not know about Ms.Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, sit tight and listen closely, because this is one history lesson you cannot miss.
Early Life
Born on Sept. 26, 1936, with the full name Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela, she was one of nine children. Her parents, Columbus Madikizela and his wife Gertrude, were both teachers and Methodist Protestants, according to The Guardian. They raised their children in the Pondoland district in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
Home Life
Growing up, Winnie was seen as a tomboy by her parents. She was not afraid to get into violent fights with her sisters, and one incident led her to cut her sister’s mouth with a tin can. This violent side of Winnie would eventually lead her to become a polarizing political figure.
However, according to The Guardian, she did have a soft side, and her kind and generous spirit was also evident from a young age as she once went out of her way to give a school friend one of her dresses so she would have something appropriate to wear to school.
Early Life Tragedies
When she was 9 years old, Winnie was already bereaved as she witnessed the passing of both her mother and her sister from tuberculosis. According to the history publication The Collector, their deaths led her to become closer to her father, who encouraged her future love for studying and literature.
First Encounter With Racism
At the same age, Winnie had a firsthand experience with South Africa’s racist apartheid regime. When she went to celebrate the end of World War II with her father and siblings at their local town hall, she was shocked when told it was a whites-only celebration and that she and her family would have to sit outside. According to South Africa History Online, this experience helped her form the political opinions that guided her career later in life.
Move To Johannesburg
In 1953, at 17 years old, Winnie followed her passion for education and moved to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, where her future husband, Nelson Mandela, was already a patron, according to The Guardian. However, it would be a few years before the pair actually met.
One of The First Black Social Workers
Winnie was a bright student who completed her studies in 1955 with the highest grades in her class. She was offered a scholarship in the United States to further her education, but she declined and instead became the first Black medical social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg, according to South Africa History Online.
Meeting Nelson Mandela
In 1957, she met Nelson Mandela through their mutual friend Adelaide Tambo, the wife of future African National Congress (ANC) President Oliver Tambo. The two quickly fell in love and were married the following year, when she was 23 and he was in his late 30s, per The Collector. The couple had two daughters together: Zenani Mandela, born Feb. 4, 1959, and Zindziswa Mandela, born Dec. 23, 1960.
The Guardian reported that when she first met Nelson Mandela, Winnie said she was petrified: “He was much older than me and he was a patron of my school of social work. We had never seen him. He was just a name on the letterheads; he was too important for us students to even know him.”
A Symbol of Apartheid Resistance
Up until 1958, Winnie had been relatively unknown in the fight against apartheid. However, she first claimed her fame as one of 1,000 women who were arrested for protesting South Africa’s pass laws. The pass laws required non-whites to carry documentation that restricted where they could go. The arrest caused Winnie to lose her job at the hospital, per The Collector.
Isolated After Her Husband’s Arrest
After Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, Winnie was also targeted by the police. She was placed on a banning order in December of that same year, restricting her from moving around Johannesburg. She was not allowed to attend any meetings with more than two people, which restricted her activism.
She was also banned from speaking to media outlets and developed trust issues because police informants would pose as her friends, and some of her close companions betrayed her, according to South African History Online.
Refusing To Be Intimidated
However, even though the government made constant attempts to silence and intimidate her, she continued to act as a revolutionary by organizing assistance for political prisoners. This made her a target for the police, who often raided her home, according to South African History Online.
Things became particularly dire in 1969, when police dragged her away from her two daughters. She was sentenced to 17 months in prison for violating the Terrorism Act. According to The Collector, she spent 13 months in solitary confinement and was tortured until she gave interrogators information on the African National Congress.
Banished To Brandfort
Eight years later, in 1977, Winnie was banished to Brandfort, an agricultural town in the Free State province of South Africa that has since been renamed Winnie Mandela. Even during her years in Brandfort, Winnie continued to speak out against racist apartheid laws. This defiance led to her being ranked as the second most popular political figure in the country after just two years of living in the town, according to South African History Online.
During her time in Brandfort, she founded a soup kitchen, a mobile health unit, a sewing club, a daycare center and many other initiatives to help young South Africans in the area. Her bravery and spirit led to her becoming an incredibly popular figure among the youth and the face of Nelson Mandela’s struggle while he was imprisoned, according to South African History Online.
A Football Club Turned Violent
She moved back to Soweto in 1986 and immediately sought to help the young South Africans there. To do this, she decided to create the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC). However, what started as a peaceful sports venture soon took a violent turn and became a gang, per The Guardian.
The Mandela United Football Club began acting as personal bodyguards for Winnie and was notorious for “necklacing,” which involved placing a tire around the neck of an apartheid informant and setting it alight. Many believed that Winnie condoned these acts of violence because of a controversial speech in which she said, “Together hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and necklaces we shall liberate this country,” according to Al Jazeera.
Mandela United Football Club Kidnapping and Murder Scandal
While all this put a stain on Winnie’s reputation and career, what really turned her into a controversial figure was when her gang was involved with the murder of a South African teenager. The MUFC suspected a local 14-year-old boy, Stompie Moeketsi, of being a police informant. In December 1989, the gang abducted and killed the young boy. His body was found five weeks later, left in a mortuary, per TIME.
These horrific acts complicated Winnie’s legacy as a political activist. Though loved by many Black college students and women across the globe, for her refusal to be intimidated by the aggressive apartheid regime, her creation and endorsement of the MUFC’s violence led to many dropping their support for Winnie, and to more acts of violence against her, like fires being set to her home, according to Al Jazeera. Ultimately, she remains a paradox: a beloved revolutionary icon and a violent, divisive political figure.
Nelson Mandela Released From Prison
Finally, in 1990, Winnie reunited with her husband, Nelson, after he was released from prison. Together they were a powerful symbol against the apartheid regime as they walked through crowds who had gathered to greet him and celebrate his release.
Sentenced for Kidnapping
One year later, as the owner of the football club, Winnie was convicted of abducting and being an accessory to the assault of Stompie Moeketsi. She was sentenced to six years in prison, but she managed to avoid that sentence through an appeal that reduced it to a fine, per The Collector.
Becomes Controversial Head of Social Welfare to the ANC
By 1991, Winnie’s relationship with the ANC had soured as the party viewed her as a liability. However, as president of the ANC, Nelson Mandela appointed her head of social welfare because of her strong relationship with South Africa’s youth population. Controversy continued to follow her, as there were rumors she was having affairs and mismanaging ANC funds, according to South Africa History Online.
Divorces Nelson Mandela
In 1996, Winnie and Nelson Mandela officially divorced after he accused her of adultery. However, even though their relationship had suffered, Winnie attended Nelson’s funeral in 2013 and sat beside his widow, politician and humanitarian Graça Machel, according to the BBC.
Political Career Crumbling
Ousted from her government posts after her divorce from Nelson Mandela, Winnie was caught up in another controversy in 2003 when she was convicted of fraud and theft in a scandal involving a local bank, per the BBC. The judge compared her to Robin Hood because she had stolen funds to give to those struggling. Ultimately, she was given a suspended sentence of three years and six months for fraud.
Continues To Fight For The Rights of Others
In 2008, she continued to fight for her beliefs as she spoke out for immigrants who had been victims of xenophobia and social deprivation in South Africa. According to The Guardian, she even went so far as to publicly apologize to them for all they had suffered.
Legal Battle for Nelson Mandela’s Home
After Nelson Mandela died in 2013, Winnie had to endure yet another legal battle as she sought to acquire his village home for their daughters, Zinzi and Zenani. However, she lost in court in 2018 when the Supreme Court decided she had no legal claim to the home, according to the BBC.
Death and Legacy
After a long life of fighting for social justice and experiencing repeated harm at the hands of law enforcement, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died on April 2, 2018, surrounded by her family after battling a long illness, according to Reuters.
Even though Winnie’s political career was tainted by controversy and the violence of the Mandela United Football Club, she was and remains an inspiration for many of South Africa’s youth and continues to be lovingly known as the Mother of the Nation.
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