Mam’ Winnie was only 23. Madiba was 40. That’s when they wedded. Thenceforth she was thrown into the harsh vortex of South Africa and the ANC’s tumultuous politics.
There wasn’t sufficient time to celebrate their matrimonial bliss. Madiba was soon an underground pimpernel.
Before they knew it, he and other Rivonia leaders were captured and jailed on Robben Island. Oliver Tambo and other leaders escaped into exile. Still others went underground. Some deserted.
Many grass widows remained, and Mam’ Winnie became a single parent for 27 years.
The apartheid regime hounded her, banged on windows in the still of the night, and broke down doors in house number 8115 Vilakazi Street in Orlando West.
They dragged her from bed in her nightdress, poked fun at her, swore at and beat her.
She kicked and fought back with her bare hands. They took her away to detain her in jail where they tortured and humiliated her.
Meanwhile, her two young girls - Zenani and Zindziswa - were left to parent themselves.
No human, let alone any woman, should ever be subjected to such brutality at the hands of a horde of hefty male white police bullies.
Back from detention, she was banned and isolated, yet remained the eternal powerful candlelight caught in the crosswinds of contradictions in society and the ANC liberation alliance.
Brutality should be left to the enemy, as it is their core competence, not to her comrades’. This is not the occupation of one’s comrades in arms.
Mao Zedong, the Chinese strategist in the theory of warfare, likened the relationship between the guerrilla and other people to that of the fish and water.
Her exile to Brandfort in the Free State was the enemy’s ultimate weapon to isolate her from the people and to break her down.
Sadly some cracks began to show below the beauty of her wonderful skin, which many would die for.
The fish was denied water for survival. But the fish metamorphosed into a crustacean - a crab. In more ways than one, comrade Nomzamo turned Brandfort into a fortress of struggle.
To the horror of the enemy, she clawed her way out of Brandfort indefatigable, hardened and more defiant, and became a more fearless warrior who the enemy came to loathe and fear even more.
Whether in flip-flops or designer high heels, she didn’t hesitate to plod into the mud, dog poo or human soil of Zonkizizwe, Diepsloot, Phola Park, Nyanga, Langa and other informal settlements where the real nation - the nation of the unwashed to whom she became a mother existed pitifully from day to day.
She criss-crossed the country to KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and to the townships of Boipatong, Sharpeville and other poverty-stricken areas where the wretched of the earth survived. Let alone Soweto, where she resided and resisted. After all, it was while there, only a few metres from her house, when she heard the staccato of the enemy’s sustained gunfire, which cold-bloodedly mowed down the children of the class of June 76.
She saw the bodies. She saw the 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, the first child casualty of this massacre.
She cried “horror! horror!” The same battle cry of Sharpeville in 1960, Boipatong and Bhisho, which reverberated in Maseru, Matola, Angola and many other places where the murder of our people occurred. It is in the course of fighting back with song, bare hands and stones that she was ready on behalf of the people to invoke any weapon, including the then much feared matchboxes.
The ANC, correctly so, said “hold! hold!” It prevailed.
At the same time, we are reminded of the saying: Mma ngwana o tshwara thipa ka bohaleng! (The mother of a child catches the blade of a knife.) Having said this, it must be stated that none of Aunt Winnie’s shortcomings should be whitewashed - if anything they should be aired and learnt from.
In a way, leaders like her and many others will, in the course of leading, commit errors. Our task is to rectify them with sensitivity, without passing misguided judgment.
Thus, it was to be welcomed for her to agree with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that things could have gone horribly wrong - in the heat of battle.
That admission in essence is the hallmark of leadership. With her death, the people of South Africa and the world should draw life from this icon’s supreme fortitude and her tremendous courage of conviction, her ability and fearlessness to spell out truth to power. The most critical aspect of the story of Winnie Mandela is that she, the candle caught in those crosswinds of contradictions, was never extinguished.
Her courage for our victory in the struggle for national self-determination knew no bounds. To those whose focus is only upon the candle wax, remember that Nomzamo was more about the light, and not burnt-out wax.
She was more the beacon of hope for our people during the most terrible times. Freedom fighters the world over are frequently tried and tested. They are tried by the enemy and tested by their own. It is easy to judge when you were not the one wearing the torn nightdress and being beaten and dragged away from your house in the dead of the night.
It is easy to judge when you were not the one whom white male police bullies mocked, while your menses ran down your legs, when they denied you sanitary towels during long hours of interrogation and torture.It is easy to judge when you were not the occasional single parent to two girl children for 27 years, when you lost your husband for almost three decades to the dungeons of apartheid.
It is easy to judge when for all your life you never suffered racial and gender degradation for the sake of your people, and not for any personal gain.
Hers was not an easy walk. Nomzamo’s story of pain and self-sacrifice is too complex to simply judge from safe and comfortable heights. It is a bridge too far
From her death, we the people of South Africa and the world should draw life. From this icon’s supreme fortitude and tremendous courage of conviction, we should draw inspiration to fight against all forms of injustice. What characterised her is the fearlessness to spell out truth to power irrespective whether it was against the crimes of the Apartheid regime or the wrongs within our popular ANC lead Liberation Alliance.
Whatever can be said about comrade Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela the following shall remain a truism: she never betrayed our noble cause for freedom. Therein lies her legacy. May her soul rest in peace.