Mandela, Winnie (National Liberation)

(1936- )

A leader of the African National Congress (ANC) in the struggle against apartheid. Winnie Mandela’s ultimate significance in South African history may be as diverse as her many names. Known variously as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nozamo Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Comrade Nomzamo, Nkosikazi Nobandle, and Nkosikazi Nobandle Nomzano Madikizela, to name a few, Winnie Mandela will probably best be remembered as one of the leaders in the ANC who fought against the racist apartheid governments in South Africa during the cold war.

Born in 1936 to two English-speaking, missionary-educated inhabitants of the Pondo area of the Transkei in South Africa, young Winnie always seemed to want to help people. In 1953 she moved to Johannesburg to pursue a degree in social work, which she obtained in 1955. Her first employer was the Baragwaneth Hospital and one of her roommates was a woman named Adelaide Tsukudu. Tsukudu introduced her to a young attorney and member of the ANC, Nelson Mandela. After a whirlwind courtship, Nelson and Winnie were married in a Methodist ceremony in 1958. The Mandelas settled into their home in the Soweto area of Johannesburg.

Winnie Mandela spent the first three years of her marriage supporting her husband during his trial on charges of treason. One way she showed her support was by wearing traditional tribal dress to the court proceedings, until the authorities prohibited such attire. In 1964, when her husband was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison for his continued work with the ANC, Winnie Mandela was forced to live in the Orlando area of Soweto. She had to resign her social work position with the Johannesburg-based Child Welfare Society because she was not allowed by the government to travel outside of Orlando.


Nevertheless, Winnie Mandela did indeed leave Orlando and was subsequently sentenced to jail. She also spent time in jail in 1969 for failing to give her name and address to the city police and for working for the then-outlawed ANC. In 1970 she was arrested on charges of terrorism and spent time in solitary confinement in the Pretoria Central Prison. Between the time her husband was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 and 1977, Winnie Mandela spent approximately 17 months in various prisons throughout South Africa. She described what it was like to spend time in solitary confinement:

Those first few days are the worst in anyone’s life that uncertainty, that insecurity . . . The whole thing is calculated to destroy you. You are not in touch with anybody . . . The days and nights became so long I found I was talking to myself. (Mandela 1985, 99)

By the time she was released from prison, Mandela had spent 491 days in solitary confinement (Lipman 1984, 233). According to Mandela, what brought her the greatest pain and suffering was not the torture or imprisonment she endured, but the pain suffered by her daughter, Zindzi: "[that] was the hardest thing for me to take as a mother . . . Of course I was bitter, more than I’ve ever been" (Mandela 1984, 25).

Mandela supported the ANC and Black majority of South Africa through the creation of several social organizations such as the Black Women’s Federation and the Black Parents’ Association. The latter organization provided medical and legal assistance in the wake of the 1976 riots in Soweto. Winnie Mandela never did take on any of the executive roles held by her incarcerated husband and that may have to do more with gender relations than her skills or abilities as a leader (O’Brien 1994, 154).

Probably the two most significant events in Mandela’s life were the 1976 Soweto uprising and her involvement with the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC). In the mid-June heat of 1976, South African police fought with the town of Soweto over the government’s attempt to compel the Black majority to educate their children in the language of the White minority Afrikaans. Officially, a few dozen died. Unofficially, a few hundred were killed. Nevertheless, the violence signaled the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Thousands of Black leaders were arrested, among them Winnie Mandela, whom the government tried to implicate as orchestrating the riots. As part of her punishment the government removed Mandela from Orlando and forced her to live in the Brandfort area of the Black township of Phatakahle, in the Orange Free State.

As a result of her Brandfort home being firebombed, the government allowed Mandela to move anywhere in South Africa, provided that she did not live in Johannesburg or Roodeport. She decided to move back to Soweto in the mid-1980s. While Mandela continued her work in support of civil and human rights, other Black groups began to distance themselves from her. One reason for this split was her involvement with the MUFC. The sporting group lived with Mandela and tended to play the role of her bodyguard more so than playing football (soccer) matches. The government arrested and found guilty many members of the football club on charges ranging from robbery to murder, including the kidnapping, torture, and murder of fourteen-year-old Stompie Moeketsi Sepei. In 1991 the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission found Mandela "politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the MUFC" (Pohlandt-Mc-Cormick 2000, 585).

As a result of MUFC’s "reign of terror," the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the United Democratic Front both cut all ties with Winnie Mandela and her organizations. Even the Mandelas could not ride out the waves of political and legal intrigue. After more than thirty years of marriage, Nelson Mandela announced in 1992 that he and Winnie had separated a year earlier. In 1996 they divorced, and Winnie Mandela added her maiden name to her last name, becoming Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Despite her legal, professional, and personal problems, Winnie Mandela was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Humanitarian Award, the Freedom Prize, the first International Simone de Beauvoir Award, and the Third World Prize for her work in advancing civil, human, and gender-specific rights in South Africa. She also was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree from Haverford Quaker College.

In the early twenty-first century, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela served as the president of the ANC Women’s League as well as a member of the South African Parliament. She continued to work for the advancement of women’s rights throughout the world.

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