Winnie Madikizela-Mandela speaks as if it was not the ANC collective that made the decisions that caused her to complain about Nelson Mandela, her ex-husband. She places all the blame squarely on his shoulders. She acts as if she was not part of the NEC that agreed to the principles that would lead to the formation a new South Africa. Apparently Nelson Mandela was a dictator who made every single decision by himself. Of course, that’s if what is reported is true.
I have always held Winnie Madikizela Mandela in the highest regard — I think most of us do despite what the media says about her. I couldn’t help but sympathise with her when former president Thabo Mbeki knocked her hat off her head when she arrived late for some ANC celebrations. I have not always agreed with her but I have always respected her struggle against oppression. I don’t know many people who would have been able to survive what she had to go through. Policemen barging down her doors as they pleased, humiliating her in front of her children. She has suffered untold humiliations. As much as Madiba was the symbol of oppression in jail, she was the symbol of resistance outside.
The mistake that Winnie Madikizela Mandela is making is that of approaching Nelson Mandela from the angle of a man who is incapable of doing wrong. It is as if she thought he was perfect and suddenly realised he wasn’t. Nelson Mandela puts this in perspective when he says of her, “She married a man who soon left her; that man became a myth; and then that myth returned home and proved to be just a man after all.” Perhaps she still sees him as a myth, a man who can do all things.
She tries to make him a mere man amongst the leaders of the ANC by the manner in which London’s Evening Standard claimed she criticised him. However, she achieves the opposite of what she was aiming for — by blaming him she places him above the other leaders because she says he alone is to blame. If she listened carefully to what he has said repeatedly, “I must not be isolated from the collective who are responsible for the success.”
The first government had to achieve certain things, political liberation first and try to avert any bloodshed that could possibly take place in the process of starting a new nation. It could not afford to be radical; radicalism has rarely led to stability anywhere. The second job of government was to bring the masses to the economic front; it didn’t really achieve it by that much, and it certainly did bring large amounts of black people to the middle class, but not enough. Sixteen years on, black people’s spending power now exceeds that of white people. She points out, correctly, that the economy is still in white hands. The struggle continues.
She is quoted saying “I kept the movement alive,” a few sentences later she says, “You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered.” We realise that and Mandela himself says that Winnie suffered a lot more than he did and there are thousands who suffered more than he did for freedom’s cause. If we look at what she said, here she is claiming sole credit. “I kept the movement alive.” The ANC and the people kept the movement alive. If anything, the movement and the people kept them both alive. Both Mandela’s cannot claim credit, they were symbols that we couldn’t have done without. We needed both. There couldn’t be one without the other.
“This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family. You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died. Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle, and there were others in the leadership too, like poor Steve Biko, who died of the beatings, horribly all alone. Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary. But look what came out.”
Another mistake she is making is that people don’t change. She remembers an angry militant young man going to jail, a man who was also the founder of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC. She thought she would meet the same fiery man but what walked out was a better man than the one who walked into prison, she didn’t know how to deal with him. He had an advantage in prison she didn’t have outside — the advantage of thinking in isolation, putting pieces together without being interrupted by the temptations of short-term goals to please the masses’ immediate needs. Nelson Mandela could put his emotions aside and think of what needed to be done for the greater good.
When we entered into a negotiated settlement, we agreed to things that ensured the unity of the nation. No one was happy with the outcome, the hallmark of successful negotiations — each side felt cheated. “When you negotiate, you must be prepared to compromise.” Compromise basically means being happy with being unhappy about what you agree to. That is what negotiations were. No one came out the outright winner during Codesa.
He realised that sacrifices had to be made, while she was thinking pay back. He came out a hero; she was painted as a villain after the Stompie incident. Their world-views couldn’t have been more different. He wanted a divorce, she didn’t. Now he was too good for her. It’s possible that these were the thoughts going through her head. I made him, his name survived because of me — he’d be nobody without me. This is how he thanks me? Of course, no one can claim to know what was going on in her head, I am making uneducated speculation.
Winnie is completely wrong. She speaks as if Nelson Mandela negotiated by himself, as if he didn’t have a team to work with, a team that came up with ideas, proposed them to the NEC and then presented to the apartheid government. She blames him alone for the ills of the current state of the country. This reminds me a little of the ANC blaming all that is wrong on Thabo Mbeki and taking credit for all that’s gone well.
Winnie reminds me of the bit in the Bible when Moses went up the mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. He was up there for a long time — weeks — if my memory serves me. When he came back, the people had become impatient and they made a golden calf and worshipped it. Moses left his brother Aaron in charge and he built a calf in order to appease the angry Israelites. Upon descending, Moses slammed the stone tablet and smashed it to pieces. Moses would occasionally call the Israelites the stiff-necked people because they were never happy, never satisfied, always complaining. They would say Egypt was better.
Now I am not saying that we shouldn’t complain when we see that things are not going the way they should be. Nelson Mandela could have done a lot of things better, but he is the first one to admit that. He is a mere man. He didn’t lead South Africa alone. Is he beyond criticism? Of course not. He must be scrutinised and we should forever remember that he is not God. Having said that, I hope Winnie Madikizela Mandela didn’t say the things she is reported to have said.
It seems to me Winnie’s recent outburst against Madiba was fuelled by long held resentments of all kinds. Resentment is a personal thing and it is up the owner of it whether they hang on to it or let it go. Human beings in general find letting go of resentment an extremely difficult thing to do. Madiba has clearly let go of any resentments he might have had. That is the wonder and glory of the man. As he himself has said, ‘holding on to resentment is like drinking poison and hoping your enemy will die’. Holding on to resentment of any kind is equivalent to locking yourself in a dungeon away from life and from your fellow humans. Only someone immersed in resentment wants to do that.
Kaya
Are you sure that Cyril led? That is not what Naomi Klein said in The Shock Doctrine. She quoted William Gumede directly.
Madiba was negotiating the political bit and Mbeki the economic. To be fair he said Mbeki persuaded Madiba, who agreed to the capitalist recovery programme. Nothing new in that, i.e. Chile, Russia etc. That Chicago School really got around and stuffed up the emerging economies. Our mining companies must have LOVED them.
Winnie is partly right about Madiba,details of his infamous legal fight with Ismail Ayob are good testimonials.This excessive,blindly and annoying over-praise of Madiba needs 2 stop already.In case someone isnt sure what im on about,wait 4 weeks preceding his birthday in July,you’ll think visiting a dentist is a challenge.
‘Selling-Out’: Is Winnie echoing Mandela?
“I chose to tell no one what I was about to do. Not my colleagues upstairs nor those in Lusaka. The ANC is a collective, but the government had made collectivity in this case impossible. I did not have the security or the time to discuss these issues with my organization. I knew that my colleagues upstairs would condemn my proposal, and that would kill my initiative even before it was born. There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way. Finally, my isolation furnished my organization with an excuse in case matters went awry; the old man was alone and completely cut off, and his actions were taken by him as an individual, not a representative of the ANC” – Nelson Mandela (1994), Long Walk to Freedom, page 627,
“Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.” – Winnie Mandela (2010), Alleged Controversial Interview with Nadira Naipaul at http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23812947-how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-ex-wife-winnie.do
@Fani Dingiswayo – (Aluta continua) I find the mutation that phrase went through in South Africa interesting: the original being: “A luta continua, vitória é certa”. It seems, in South Africa, that the leaders are not interested in the second part, the first being what matters to them. (Struggling people don’t complain about leaders and are prepared to starve so the leaders can drive German cars, making the west even richer.)
How sad. How much time wasted on destruction that should be spent on construction? The revolution is over. Ring the bells and let’s start clearing the rubble to rebuild. Remelt the canons into plow shares (Winnie, Malema etc.), they are making inapropriate noises. There are a lot of adults out there who missed their education and badly need it to make personal progress.
Khaya,
This arrived in my inbox. I think it lends credence to my position, wouldn’t you say?
“I chose to tell no one what I was about to do. Not my colleagues upstairs nor those in Lusaka. The ANC is a collective, but the government had made collectivity in this case impossible. I did not have the security or the time to discuss these issues with my organization. I knew that my colleagues upstairs would condemn my proposal, and that would kill my initiative even before it was born. There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way. Finally, my isolation furnished my organization with an excuse in case matters went awry; the old man was alone and completely cut off, and his actions were taken by him as an individual, not a representative of the ANC” – Nelson Mandela (1994), Long Walk to Freedom, page 627,
The general consensus in the comments is that the people who hate the ANC and the 1994 consensus think you are right, and everybody else thinks that Winnie has a point.
Maybe not too much of a point, given who she is, but much more than you admit. And she’s dead right about Archappeaser Tutu, too.
@Jon Story. Thank you.
Mandela is a man, not an icon. He espoused violence at one time and that landed him in gaol for most of his life. He admits his mistakes openly in his autobiography. I’m sure he had great difficulty making peace with FW but Mandela saw that anything else could lead only to the total destruction of the country and millions of deaths.
What would be left for ‘the people’ to ‘inherit’ after all out civil war? Nothing. The existing infra-structure would be destroyed. The country would have no functioning economy for decades, if ever. A civil war could only worsen the future for the people Mandela loved and tried to save from utter ruin.
Mandela had nothing personal to gain from what he did. He wasn’t ‘playing hero’. He went out of his way to emphasise everywhere he went in the world that it was the ‘collective’ of the ANC that had liberated the country. If Mandela did anything wrong it was that: bowing unconditionally to the ‘collective’. The ‘collective’ is a convenient way to avoid responsibility and keep people in a state of fear. No matter how stupid the decisions of the collective, one cannot differ. That is how the Soviet Empire destroyed itself from within–with Winnie-type ‘purges’ of those who dared to differ.
Mandela is not perfect but he is the best the ANC has produced and that is good enough in my book.
Mtimande, the problem is not that Mandela forgot economic liberation it is that all in the struggle organisations in the late 80′s and early 90′s did: all shouted for sanctions, all endorsed liberation before education, the unions totally rejected all shareholding schemes etc etc. So it is wrong to blame Mandela he just followed what everyone demanded. What did Winnie reccommend back then for economic liberation??? – zero she was too busy attacking everything.
Go read all the publications of that time; the ANC/SACP Unions and everyone associated with bringing down Apartheid, anyone pressing for economic considerations was lucky not to be necklaced.
Now it is 16 years too late and needs patient, dedicated, hard work plus huge huge resources to be ploughed into Black/disadvantaged education and skills training for at least the next 10 years.
The ANC/SACP/Union allaince leading us should be strongly punished for not starting this way back in 1994.
Brent
Khaya i always read your stuff-love it most of the times,but THIS,are you really saying you know Mandela more than WINNIE or are you just saying that the version of Mandela that Winnie portrays is wrong,either way this is Winnie’s personal experience of what happened.SHE was the wife throughout all of this
it took one read through this extraordinarily colourful collection of comments for me to realise something: all this talk of ‘equality’ and ‘rainbow nation’ and all that is just dirt cheap. like it or not, we live in an extremely racially charged society; there’s no escaping it, at least not for the foreseeable future. it’s almost so deeply ingrained and well hid that it’s become an addiction. it makes me incredibly sad. even more so that it takes a touchy topic like this to expose it.
Sipho, you are talking about talks about talks. Not talks about negotiating the economy, what shape or form the new government would take. He was also negotiating the release of other political prisoners. He basically facilitated the release of the others. He refused to be released before them which is why he was the last “out”.
Do I sense a realisation amongst Thoughtists that blaming and continuing to reiterate the half truths and lies used by populists like Winnie and Julius is not productive. The Codesa agreement was a contract that each side was equally unhappy with. The Nat government didn’t want to give up any power and the ANC wanted it all. A compromise was reached.
But what happened next. The human and physical capital inherited by the ANC government was, and continues to be, squandered, bit by bit. By selling assets, corruption, mismanagement and no management. It wasn’t the Codesa agreement that was flawed, it was its implementation, largely by an inept and corrupt ANC government. Race doesn’t even come into it except as a convenient distraction.
When do we stop lying to ourselves? Mandela sold out, that is that. Black lives are still cheaper, education is still a privilege, hunger/poverty still have Black faces. Who was he thinking of when he started the negotiations, NOT BLACK PEOPLE! He wanted out, finish and klaar. As for Tutu the less said the better.
I would stop worrying about who liberated South Africa, and worry about who bankrupted it in 16 years.
And don’t blame whites or apartheid – this is EXACTLY the same pattern that Ghana followed – they were bankrupt in less than a decade and their first president deposed by a coup.
It started with the ANC borrowing to do the Arms Deal and having to follow the rules set by the World Bank and the IMF (who also insisted on the sale of Sasol and all parastatals. Unfortunately they could only find buyers for the profitable ones – Sasol, Iscor, Telkom etc )
They made PROFITS for the state in 1994. Not only are the good ones sold, but we are borrowing R400 billion to fix the bad ones that no-one wanted to buy (SAA, SABC, Eskom)
Compare the balance sheet of 1994 and our last National budget and INCLUDE those borrowings, and you will see we are bankrupted.
And who is rich from those sales?
AND we have lost 5 million jobs since 1994, NOT just 1 million last year – and we have NO industrial policy to create jobs, even now.
Khaya
Even Mandela himself does not pretend he controlled who was released when, or that he had any idea when De Klerk was releasing whom.
In fact no-one did – not even his De Klerk’s party.
Plus when it suits him Mandela is ” a leader who has to make decisions ahead of his people” and other times his decisions are decisions of ” a collective”.
Tutu does exactly the same, except when he goes against the mandate of the church it is God who tells him to do so.