Nelson Mandela’s Ex-wife, Winnie, Dies At 81

Winnie Mandela dead at 81 after battle with illness in hospital

SOUTH African anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has died aged 81, her spokesman confirmed on Monday.


Victor Dlamini said in a statement she died in a Johannesburg hospital after a long illness. Her family is expected to speak later in the day.

The ex-wife of Nelson Mandela was known as “mother of the nation” and had been admitted to hospital in January with a kidney infection. News of her death comes on the day the US marks 50 years since the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King.

The young activist met Nelson Mandela at a bus stop in Soweto when she was 22 years old in 1957 and the pair married a year later.

They were married for 38 years in a romance that was spent largely apart with Nelson imprisoned for 27 years, leaving Winnie to raise two daughters and keep his political dream alive.

In 1990 the world watched when Nelson Mandela finally walked out of prison — hand-in-hand with Winnie.

But they separated just two years later and divorced in 1996 after a legal wrangle that revealed her affair with a young bodyguard and she went on to become embroiled in several controversies.

South Africa's Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who is popularly known as "the mother of the nation" was admitted to hospital in January. Picture: AFP PHOTO / MUJAHID SAFODIENSource:AFP

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Nelson and Winnie upon his release from prison in February 11, 1990. Picture: AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOESource:AFP

Nelson Mandela kisses his then-wife Winnie Mandela in 1991 after being unanimously elected to succeed to African National Congress. Picture: AFP PHOTO / TREVOR SAMSONSource:AFP

With or without Nelson, Winnie built her own role as a tough, glamorous and outspoken black activist with a loyal grassroots following in the segregated townships.

“From every situation I have found myself in, you can read the political heat in the country,” she said in a biography.



Winnie was born September 26, 1936, in the village of Mbongweni in what is now Eastern Cape.

She completed university, a rarity for black women at the time, and became the first qualified social worker at Johannesburg’s Baragwanath Hospital.

It was her political awakening, especially her research work in Alexandra township on infant mortality, which found 10 deaths in every 1,000 births.

“I started to realise the abject poverty under which most people were forced to live, the appalling conditions created by the inequalities of the system,” she said.

With a crowd following Nelson’s release from prison. Picture: AFP PHOTO / AFP FILES / WALTER DHLADHLASource:AFP

Winnie in 1997 at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearing in Johannesburg. Picture: AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENSource:AFP

She wed Mandela in June 1958 but he soon went underground to escape authorities. In October that year, she was arrested for the first time at a protest by women against the pass system that restricted movements of black people in white-designated areas.

After Nelson was sentenced to life in prison, Winnie was also in and out of jail as the police hounded her in a bid to demoralise him.

Government security forces tortured her, tried locking her up, confined her to Johannesburg’s Soweto township, and then banished her to the desolate town of Brandfort, where her house was bombed twice.

She was allowed to visit her husband in prison rarely, and they were always divided by a glass screen.

Nelson and Winnie Mandela in 1990 with their grandchild Bambata. Picture: AFP PHOTO / WALTER DHALDHLASource:AFP

Nelson and Winne in the garden of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's residence in Cape Town, one day after his release from jail. Picture: AFP PHOTO / WALTER DHLADHLASource:AFP

‘NECKLACING’ LINK

Throughout the height of apartheid, Winnie remained at the forefront of the struggle, urging students in the Soweto uprising in 1976 to “fight to the bitter end”.

But in the 1980s, the militant-martyr began to be seen as a liability for Mandela and the liberation movement.

She had surrounded herself with a band of vigilante bodyguards called the Mandela United Football Club, who earned a terrifying reputation for violence.

Winnie was widely linked to “necklacing”, when suspected traitors were burnt alive by a petrol-soaked car tyre being put over their head and set alight.

Her notoriety was reinforced by a speech in 1986 when she declared that “with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.”

In 1991, Winnie was convicted of kidnapping and assault over the killing of Stompie Moeketsi, a 14-year-old boy.

Moeketsi, who was accused being an informer, was murdered by her bodyguards in 1989.

Her jail sentence was reduced to a fine, and she denied involvement in any murders when she appeared before Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.

“She was a tremendous stalwart of our struggle, and icon of liberation — something went wrong, horribly, badly wrong,” Tutu said as damning testimony implicated her.

Winnie in 1997 at a hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Johannesburg. Picture: AFP PHOTO / POOL / Peter ANDREWSSource:AFP

Arrested in 1991 while staring a protest calling for the release of detainees on hunger strike. Picture: AFP PHOTO / TREVOR SAMSONSource:AFP

WIth Nelson Mandela in Paris in 1990. Picture: AFP PHOTO / DANIEL JANINSource:AFP

She served as a deputy minister in President Mandela’s government, but was sacked for insubordination and eased out of the top ranks of the ruling party.

After a 2003 conviction for fraud, she later rehabilitated her political career winning a seat in parliament in 2009 elections.

But her bitterness emerged in 2010 newspaper interview, saying: “Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks.”

She also called Tutu a “cretin” and the reconciliation process a “charade”, though she later claimed the quotes were never meant to be published Despite it all, she was a regular visitor travelling from Soweto — where she still lived — to Mandela’s bedside in his final months, and she said she was present when he died.

He did not leave her anything in his will.

At her lavish 80th birthday party in Cape Town, Madikizela-Mandela wore a sparkling white dress and beamed with pleasure as she was lauded by guests that included senior politicians from rival parties.

“Mama Winnie has lived a rich and eventful life, whose victories and setbacks have traced the progress of the struggle of our people for freedom,” then vice president Cyril Ramaphosa, who is now president

Winnie Mandela later claimed that “Mandela let us down” after the civil rights movement. Picture: AFP/ GULSHAN KHANSource:AFP