Winnie Mandela The Rose of the Liberation Movement

Like the legendary Penelope in the Greek mythology of Homer’s Odyssey, Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had to endure years of heartache as a young wife because of an absentee husband. But like her Greek counterpart, Winnie Mandela was a tragic figure imbued with extraordinary spiritual strengths to cope with her adversarial situation. After all, her name means ‘One who goes through trials but soldiers on stoically’. FAITH BALOYI pays tribute to women whose collective strength is personifi ed by the Mother of the Nation.

“The day it all began, began like all other days. Through it all, I found the need to resurrect the urge to enquire on the cause of our women of strength.” These were the words of a man-friend, who in an accidental moment of soul bearing led me to pursue an inquiry of sorts. One that would be feminine in its thought seeking and divine in its intent in trying to identify what is a woman of strength. How has the universe made her up, how does history remember her and how has time undone her? Mythology often occupies the subject of the Goddess fi gure and imagines on the character of the sacred feminine. We women – remember the Odyssey’s Penelope for her unshakable loyalty when she protected a kingdom with a leader unreturned – also understand female divinity as the selfl essness of a woman as Hypatia of Alexandria. She is remembered for her martyr-like death in the name of empowerment. How far we have come as women, is in equally offering homage to Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela Mandela.

She sacrifi ced her life for a cause that ventured beyond the self. All of these women are tied together by a belief they are willing to die for. Imprinted in the memories of her moons, Africa remembers two of her daughters, rooted on the furthermost points of her span, eons apart, yet destined to walk the same roads en route the same cause. All those many years ago in Egypt, Hypatia began to start a fi re Nomzamo Winnie Mandela would rekindle in 50s South Africa. She would therefore continue the legacy of a woman who does not know her place because she cannot be placed. That woman, who in seeking to uplift her nation is rewarded with inquisition. This is that same story of the untameable female spirit that serves sentence to systems that revel in omniscience. Timeless to a fault because it only reveals how through the ages we have not come very far in our dealings as human beings. To speak of a woman as Winnie, is to firstly understand that the path she walked was intended. A path fated even in her name Nomzamo (one who will go through many trials); of greatness – difficult but written, all the same. This singular woman functions as a charged symbol that incarnates so many things beyond the liberation movement, the divine feminine even the black spirit. She is someone who stands as a stature loaded with plurality because of her transgressive nature.

Her life and times through the struggle represent human frailty as much as the many dispossessed lives. It is this quality to fight for the articulation of a collective pain that deems her of goddess stature. Ndebele honours her as a descendent of Homer’s Penelope, as women “who survive the expectations placed on them by the society” and hence survive oppression from their society. Much like Penelope, the sacrifi ces she encountered required a rare spiritual strength. She reminds womanhood of an inner resource, gone forgotten through ages of subjugation and sedation. Winnie’s transformative power has carried many meanings throughout her life; from a nurturer to an icon of resistance to a woman fallen from grace. Through it all she comes out as a teacher of life. Her ability to surmount a system that created a chain of frustrations spanning over more than three decades is an empowering lesson. We are reminded that while the physical form may have its limitations as to the brutalities it can withstand, the spirit cannot be excommunicated and never ever broken. Rising like a phoenix out of its ashes many a time, Winnie became the embodiment of an iron will so powerful it dwarfed human evil. Most signifi cant about being a leader is to lead by example in becoming what it is you live for and most importantly knowing that a true leader creates other leaders, not followers. It was through her defiance of what stood that she repeatedly showed her people another way.

Those blacks that had bought into the racist belief that they were born inferior had been conditioned into thinking there was no other way. It was her love for her people that managed to rebuild national black pride. The venture to restore belief in self began a long time ago when she was a little girl who dared to question. Even as a young girl, Winnie did not accept the way in which she was supposed to locate herself in the world. For her not being afforded the same treatment as the white violated a natural balance. It was this trust of inner intuition that set her on a path to achieve the extraordinary. The nation saw her become the first black medical social worker in the country amongst many more philanthropic causes that would follow. This early on, the late Dr Motlana recalled her as “having a highly developed social conscious” which renders into an unworldly depth of love. Fighting for the belief that we are all born equal saw her battle for the enfranchisement of all. Evoking the Black Consciousness dream, she epitomized the restoration of belief in self and thus resembled a meeting point between the multiracialism of the ANC, the open defiance of the PAC and the black pride of the Black Consciousness movement.

Winnie’s greatness revealed itself in her servitude to those around her and her desire to fashion the liberation movement with the people and not her individual ambitions. Her commitment to a collective emancipation of those suffering saw her invest in easing the severances of poverty, eradicating chained mindsets and trying to rescue the shattered black ego. She gave the people hope when they had succumbed. She would close the decade with her first detention in 58’s pass law campaign and her last marriage. Henceforth mobilizing a lifetime of messianic virtue and becoming the heart of the liberation movement in all senses. Constant detention in the decades to come would make her the face of defi ance, as she would emerge to become the international symbol of the woman behind the misplaced throne and the woman behind bars. The apartheid system institutionalised many unforgivable agitations, but highest on this order was the emotional violence it infl icted on being. Africa has spent four hundred years in slavery to the colonial, never loosing hope for a black dawn. Winnie would endure what would feel just as long as a “mother of a nation” perpetually in waiting. Waiting for her loved one; the liberation of her people; the cleansing of her land from all her people’s blood it had become buried under. The sixties would see her begin her journey alone and live out the prophecy Mandela had envisioned for her lifetime without him: “You will be vilifi ed; you must expect that you will be told that you are responsible for my being in prison. You are young and a life without a husband is full of all kinds of insults”. It was from this point that she would echo a journey close to that of Homer’s Penelope who on waiting for Odysseus’ return would become a measurement of female virtue, always at the test of frustration and failure.

The by-product of a woman in waiting which no psychologist prepares them for is that they will inevitably become their own afterthought – a feat so immense that only that which is divine can steer you through it. In the years that followed Winnie would take on the immense responsibility of representing her incarcerated husband whilst facing the challenge of overcoming cultural clashes as a young black woman who is meant to occupy the space in the background. The stream of banning orders, detentions and harassments to come would serve not only to intrude on her livelihood but her capacity as a family woman. While attempts to erode the trust between her and Mandela were being fuelled on the inside, the outside saw her children removed from her proximity for the sake of their own safety. She recalled how one of the most difficult things in being in and out of prison was not being able to offer her children maternal love or the protection every mother affords her young: “the commitment to the liberation affects those dearest to you” she recalls, considering the ordeals her children had to endure. Targeted as a key threat to the security of the state meant being under constant watch – which would translate as imprisonment anyway; inside or outside being just the physics of it. In a reality where blackness is an offence all on its own already why waver? It was the adversity of her situation that ignited the ferociousness she would become infamous for, a refusal to cower down further to a system that had robbed her of her life and was now trying to rob her of her soul. Moving between her traditional attire and her khaki military outfi t served to further her statement of defiance. She would use a similar signifi er to boomerang a fear marked with her own message. This is how she would convey to her people to counter the fear, by denying the uniform that represented control. If one is to assess ways of suffering, then which does one condemn more, the hardships that are visible to a default or the ones that have the workings of a virus-slow, internal and multiplying with every beating? Although external, the intention behind the numerous violations laid to her were geared at something more than frustration – they were geared at annihilating her within. The seventies would offer Winnie solitude. Banishment in Brandfort advanced
isolation worse than the sixties in Soweto.

The move was designed so as to tire her might, empty her hope and reduce her to a lifeless husk. There she would encounter the stifl ing of her activity through human watchdogs and countless arrests for acts, which had always been her human right. All who have experienced the restrictions of confinement, especially when solitary, come to realise that the greatness of the spirit is marked by one who does not become a product of their environment, but manipulates it instead. She repeatedly transgressed her physical boundaries showing that space is a physical illusion; it is what goes on in your head and your heart that matters more. By overcoming physical limitations, she was not allowing them to govern her mind and what her soul yearned for. The system emptied her bed, her bosom, her memories, and her company but failed to empty her spirit. The period of her exile in the Free State she devoted to turning around a bleak environment into a station of welfare and sustenance. Bringing change to Brandfort came about through her social initiatives. She reminded the black women of who they were before the amnesia they had suffered at the hands of colonialism. Together they were the thread that could pick up the pieces and mend their broken families, broken children and broken identities. The “mother of the nation” would once again revisit the social work path of crèches and clinics. This path which she had set out to do all those many years ago before a legendary man stopped her on the street to ask her to ready her wedding sizes for a dressmaker. As fate would have it, it would all come full circle. Apartheid as a concept had its foundation in erosion. The forces that carried it forth believed that eventually Winnie would retreat into a space of oblivion. That way, they would have succeeded in extinguishing the political idea she

stood for. Always attuned to her interconnectedness to her people she would respond, “my private self does not exist, whatever they do to me, they do the people in this country.” Remembering what Hypatia of Alexandria died for and remembering Penelope’s years of trial in awaiting her beloved’s return is to remember Winnie’s kindred spirits. These women who were made to serve as mirrors in how far their societies need to go to reach the depth of love that was intended by the divine. These women arrive destined to restore the order and are yet failed by their fellow man. Does time heal them, will history give them their dues and will Africa redress their pain? Perhaps next time, and so they still wait!

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