By Milton Nkosi
The death of
South Africa's veteran anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela at the
age of 81 has sparked a national debate about how she should be remembered.
The more
traditional sections of society, including her staunch supporters, want us to
remember her as a faultless woman.
Others,
particularly those who are still in the trenches fighting the old battles in
favour of white supremacy, want us to remember Mrs Madikizela-Mandela as a
violent and deeply flawed individual.
But anyone
who wants to truly understand the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela I knew needs to go
back in time and trace the steps of humiliation she suffered under the racist
system of apartheid.
She was a
freedom fighter; a revolutionary who was at the coalface of the anti-
apartheid
struggle - not an armchair activist who waged a revolution on Twitter or
Facebook.
She was left
to raise two young daughters when her husband of four years, Nelson Mandela,
was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life in prison on the notorious Robben
Island prison.
An activist
in her own right, Mrs Madikizela-Mandela was once arrested in her pyjamas. The
police refused to grant her permission to get her relative, who lived a block
away, to come and stay with her children.
Torture chamber
In 1969, she
was locked in solitary confinement for 491 days. She was even left in her cell
when she was on her period, without sanitary towels.
Her cell was
adjacent to a torture chamber.
"Prisoner
number 1323/69" wrote in her diary, which was later published in a book
entitled 491 Days, that the screams of women being beaten from across the walls
will never leave her mind.
Later, at a
time when many other anti-apartheid leaders were languishing in jail or in
exile, she not only represented the liberation movement. She was The Movement.
When she
moved, the frontline moved with her. She did not fill the vacuum left by Mr
Mandela. She simply took her rightful place at the centre of the battle for the
freedom of black people.
When the
apartheid regime found her to be too powerful to handle, it resorted to
banishing her from her home in the commercial capital, Johannesburg, to the
small rural town of Brandfort in what was then the Orange Free State, a bastion
of white supremacy.
She was not
allowed to receive visitors, but she travelled daily to the local post office
to make phone calls telling the world about the brutality of the apartheid
system.
Beautiful and charismatic
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 selective
amnesia.
One example
is the reaction of former newspaper columnist David Bullard who wrote on
Twitter: "So, after an educational night on Twitter, we're all agreed
then. Winnie was a saint who fought bravely against apartheid and only set fire
to people or had kids murdered when it was absolutely necessary."
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".
It was a
poignant moment - an African woman, removed from society as punishment for
asking for basic human rights, getting a visit from one of the most powerful
politicians in the US. This sent a clear message that she - and black people -
were not alone in the struggle against apartheid.
Mrs
Madikizela-Mandela was not just a fearless freedom fighter, she was incredibly
beautiful. Even if you were an apartheid-era policeman who met her, you would
not forget her face, eyes, and beautiful smile. She also had a unique charisma,
and was in many ways, regal.
But she was
not perfect. She had her flaws.
She was
convicted of fraud and being an accessory to kidnapping.
Any
fair-minded person cannot reflect on Mrs Madikizela-Mandela's life without
mentioning 14-year-old Stompie Sepei. He died at the hands of her scandal-prone
football club, bodyguards and driver, after being falsely accused of being an
apartheid spy.
Her support
for "necklacing" suspected traitors by putting a tyre around their
necks, dousing them with petrol and setting them alight also put her in direct
conflict with her comrades.
'Apartheid's legacy'
Following
her death, anti-apartheid activist and opposition politician Mosiuoa Lekota
said: "Those who did nothing under apartheid never made mistakes."
All these
experiences and more left her traumatised. Some suspect she suffered from
post-traumatic stress disorder, which was never treated because she went from
one brutal treatment to the next without delay.
I will never
forget the day Archbishop Desmond Tutu pleaded with her at the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, formed to heal the wounds of apartheid, to say
"sorry" for all the things that had gone wrong. She only agreed to
acknowledge that sometimes things "went horribly wrong."
Author
Charlene Smith, who knew Mrs Madikizela-Mandela from the mid-1970s, could not
have put it more succinctly when she posted on Facebook:
"Winnie
is the Conscience of a Nation that has already forgotten the tragedy of
apartheid history; even in her death, people do not realize how she suffered,
how damaged she became and how it hurt her and those who cared for her most.
"South
Africa today has one of the worst crime rates in the world, it has millions of
damaged people - they are apartheid's legacy. It is in remembering and healing
a wounded people that we honor the legacy of Winnie Madikizela Mandela. Sleep
with the angels Nomzamo."
Source: BBC
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