Winnie Mandela

It is an indictment on our education system that I don’t know more about Winnie Mandela. Growing up in South Africa my exposure to her has largely been through incidental news broadcasts, the recent film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and of course, her regular appearances in the Madame & Eve cartoon strip in the early 2000s — always with that hat?!

In many respects she has been painted as the villain. Not only was she divorced from a man held in the highest esteem world wide, she was also complicit in terrible violence during the Apartheid years. In the movie she is depicted as violent, severe and out of control.

Considering her recent death, reading various articles and comments on social media… the thought that has come most strongly to mind is this: Winnie Mandela did not choose her path.

She was forced into an unjust South Africa whose leadership traded in violence and oppression. History tells us that she responded in similar currency. I believe that in many respects Winnie Mandela was more like the rest of us than we might be comfortable admitting.

Unfortunately, her husband was nothing like the rest of us, and so acted as a potent contrast to her behaviour. Nelson Mandela’s patience and mercy in the face of brutal oppression have propelled him to the highest echelons of respected leadership world wide. He is hardly a fair comparison.

In these moments of pause, each South African should not just mourn the passing of a significant South African. We should mourn a legacy that could have been so different, had it been given the opportunity.