While reflecting on freedom in South Africa and the icons who led the cavalry into liberation, the narrative remains androcentric. The role that women have historically played in organizing is often dismissed or erased entirely. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy, for example, has been reenvisioned and shrouded by controversy. Misogyny and patriarchy have been the springboards that have elevated the narratives of the late anti-apartheid activist, politician, and wife of Nelson Mandela as having been an unruly, shady figure. However, the story of her continuing the work of the liberation struggle and proving herself as an indispensable component while leaders were imprisoned or in exile under the country’s apartheid regime was suppressed and many of Madikizela-Mandela’s contributions went unrecognized. Through the intervention of Black women and Black feminists following her death, her legacy is being rewritten.
Born in the village of Bizana in 1936, Madikizela-Mandela exhibited would end up making disruptive strides even at an early age. As a child, she subverted gender norms by partaking and excelling in stick fights, a practice that is often reserved for young boys. Her parents have been recorded in the past stating that they wished she were a boy, as she was so formidable and unbreakable in spirit as a young girl. Madikizela-Mandela’s name is oftentimes mentioned as an addendum to her ex-husband, the late anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela. What this practice denies is her own political history and personal consciousness of living in and fighting for freedom in a racialised society as a Black woman. Two events from her childhood are cited as formative in her desire to revolt against the regime: Once witnessing a man feeding his wife and child outside a store when a young Black man arrived spewing racial expletives and kicking the couple and their young child. Later, when she qualified as a social worker, her political awakening was a result of the high mortality rate of infants in the township where she worked.
Apartheid operated with violence that enforced the constant severance of families, isolation tactics and psychological warfare. Madikizela-Mandela and her husband were only married for five years when he was arrested and was to spend 27 years in prison. Alone and left to raise two daughters, Madikizela-Mandela was forced to deal with raids and harassment at the hands of the State Police. She was arrested numerous times, declared a “banned person” and was once placed in solitary confinement for 17 months.
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Considering this brutality and the ways in which mothers and children were violently cleaved apart by the regime Madikizela-Mandela once stated in an interview, "We are the mothers whose babies were shot on our backs and sometimes we fell with those babies. The atrocities that have been committed by [the apartheid regime] arise in every mother such bitterness which you cannot put into words.”
Madikizela-Mandela was fiercely rooted in the centre of the struggle in ways that were inextricable from parts of her personal life. In an article for New Frame, Ntombizikhona Valela notes the calculation and significance behind Madikizela-Mandela’s strategic wardrobe choices. Zindzi Mandela once fondly recalled the black and green headscarf her mother loved wearing— black for the people and green for the land. She was a woman who could not be silenced and was resolute in her duties as a political activist. When placed in the village of Brandfort as an attempt to further isolate and surveille her, she rallied and organized soldiers while being impeccably dressed.
Towards the release of her husband, there was a concentrated effort to silence Madikizela-Mandela within her political party and externally. Her passion was observed as a threat rather than an asset. In the 2017 documentary Winnie, the Director of Stratcom operations Vic McPherson explores that concerted effort in targeting her personal life. The character assassination was a sinister covert operation rooted in misogynistic ideals of destroying her image as a mother and future first lady of the nation. Madikizela-Mandela’s image was moulded into an effigy of violence, volatility and disobedience.
The narrative of her disobedience was an integral part of the project to destroy her as a legitimate freedom fighter and ultimately led to the demise of her marriage. In the documentary, Madikizela addresses her discomfort with being relegated to just a wife. “I was horrified to find that I had lost my identity. I was just Mandela’s wife.” Madikizela-Mandela struggled to reconcile herself with the sincerity of the State when her husband was released and discussions for a peaceful transition were being placed on the table. In her interview with Phil Donahue in 1990, she says “It is true, I am much angrier than him. It is true I have found it very, very difficult to believe in the sincerity of the ruling class.” Here Madikizela-Mandela was clear that she would not stand for a negotiation that would compromise her people and was willing to take up arms should the peace talks go awry.
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Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed away in 2018. Her death was marred by reports of her involvement in torturous practices during the liberation struggle. Her name was weighed down by her husband’s as if her own legacy was only ancillary to his. The positioning of her legacy as a sinner juxtaposed to Nelson Mandela as a saint continued up until her death. But young Black feminists in South Africa sought to rectify the injustice of erasure and place Madikizela-Mandela in the passages of history where she too can receive the honour and accurate documentation she deserves. In an Instagram post in commemoration of Madikizela-Mandela’s death anniversary, poet, theatre-maker and artist Lebo Mashile stated, “Magyutyana, Nomzamo, the woman who I had admired for my entire life died. I thought there would be those closer to her who would do the work that accompanies the death of a close luminary, such as PR and media analysis. Then the international media houses continued their vile years’ long project of vilifying Madikizela. Black feminist got into formation. We tweeted, we wrote, we did interviews, we organized ourselves into a force that eventually led to Winnie Mandela getting the state funeral that she deserved. The death of Nomzamo marked a shift in SA gender politics. It was the feminist awakening for many Black women. We wore doeks (headscarves) for months afterwards in remembrance. The realisation that no one is spared the violence of racist misogyny, not me, not my own grant and certainly not Madikizela, landed like a ton of bricks.” Mashile’s reflection delineates the parts where Black women begin to be vilified and their resistance efforts and resilience despite it.
At a colloquium organized by Soul City to commemorate Madikizela-Mandela, speaker Gail Smith for the South African Human Rights Commission stated reflected on the figure’s life and legacy stating, “In retrospect, Madikizela-Mandela found herself in a patriarchal society which failed to protect her at difficult times in South Africa. Because the regime was always targeting her and whenever there was a court case and she turned up dressed well in a court case with a traditional Xhosa attire.”
Her death was somewhat of a cathartic moment. An intergenerational conversation occurred where young feminists started to question where the guard of honour and protection was for Mam’ Winnie— a woman who continued to live in her community as a mother, confidante, neighbour and church leader. In her name, the call to challenge gender-based violence and the war on women and queer people in the country grew louder. Challenges against patriarchy and misogyny reverberated across the country and continue to do so as democracy fails to usher in liberation for Black women. The legacy left behind is undoubtedly powerful and complicated one shaped by insurmountable grief, physical and sexual violence and isolation. However, Madikizela-Mandela was loved and misunderstood by many. She was a representative of the people she fought for, and a complex, multidimensional figure who left an indelible mark on South Africa’s journey.