By Pamela Dube
When the going gets tough, says Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, she seeks refuge among the "masses", the people of Soweto.
Following the public spat with President Thabo Mbeki, the 65-year-old ANC women's league president went into relative isolation, refusing to respond to the president's actions during the Youth Day commemoration at Orlando stadium on June 16.
She felt assured of one thing, however, she said, notwithstanding her public humiliation at the hands of the president and her censure by the ANC. "The masses are still with me. I am the ANC and nobody will take that away from me."
Still, Madikizela-Mandela did not sound that convincing. Though still commanding popularity on the ground, she is isolated from the party leadership. Worse still, she doesn't look well. Her face looks strained and her voice is weaker.
But Nelson Mandela's former wife is not one to fall silent under attack. She claims that, if anything, the June 16 incident hurt the president's image more than hers.
On Friday, Madikizela-Mandela dragged herself out of bed, draped herself in a colourful purple suit and agreed to tell her side of the story to a small group of local journalists assembled outside her home.
Contrary to the ANC statement, criticising her late arrival, she said that last Saturday she had no intention of disregarding protocol by arriving late at the Youth Day rally and then ascending onto the podium.
"I did not want to upstage anyone," she said.
Madikizela-Mandela has addressed several June 16 rallies in the past, an event that commemorates the massacre of students by the police in 1976.
This year, however, she was not even invited to the government-sponsored Youth Day activities. But she still decided to go to Orlando stadium, so as to ensure that "my absence from the June 16 commemoration was not misinterpreted".
When the president's motorcade arrived in Soweto, "I followed it. I could hear the motorcade from my home because it's near Orlando stadium".
But at the gate, after the president's group was let through, all the other cars were blocked from gaining access, she said. A number of young people, who were obviously waiting outside, not for the government rally, but the music festival, blocked the gate, and "after 15 minutes or so, we decided to go the police station to get an escort".
When she finally got through, the same youths followed her into the stadium grounds, she said.
They did more than that. They were joined by people on the stands, chanting: "Winnie, Winnie, Winnie!"
It was nothing unusual, she said, because "our people always associate June 16 with me. I am always expected to be there. I was there in 1976 when our children were being killed. We were throwing stones together".
In an obvious reference to the tensions between the ANC returnees and those who fought for the struggle against apartheid internally, Madikizela-Mandela said: "You don't read about June 16 uprisings from the Oxford dictionary and claim to know all about them."
And about her action of mounting the podium, Madikizela-Mandela said: "I was not going to kiss the president. I was going to ask if we could talk after his speech."
She said the decision to go to the stadium was intended as a first step to heal the rift between her and the president since the public fallout over the letter she wrote to Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Refusing to divulge the contents and intention of the letter, which insinuated, among other things, that Mbeki was a womaniser, she said "the letter has been thoroughly abused by all. It was written to Zuma, and he alone had that letter", thereby suggesting that the deputy president's office leaked it to the media.
Though having campaigned to ensure that Mbeki got support for the presidency in 1997, today Madikizela-Mandela sounds less prepared to play the same role at next year's ANC conference.
In fact, Madikizela-Mandela appears to see nothing but chaos under Mbeki's leadership.
For her, government policies are failing to deliver on critical issues like poverty alleviation, the fight against HIV and Aids, youth development and participation in the economy - and land redistribution.
"Today, when I walk in the squatter camps, I see more hungry people than I did during the apartheid era."
Madikizela-Mandela readily volunteered that the ANC has lost touch with the grassroots.
"The mere fact that the government needs kwaito artists to attract our youths to events like Youth Day shows you that we have lost the mass appeal. Mandoza is now more popular than our leaders."
Madikizela-Mandela joins a chorus of former leaders of the 1976 uprisings, and the PAC and Azapo, in criticising the form that days like June 16 have taken: celebration instead of commemoration.
"If I had been party to drafting policies around these very important days, I would have ensured they are given the dignity they deserve. It is not African to celebrate death. In death, we pray, mourn and sing solemn songs.
"And on June 16, our children died, and we have to mourn them, not dance on their blood," she said, adding that holding the Comrades marathon on June 16 was "degrading and disrespectful".