Winnie Mandela: A Life

Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob's Winnie Mandela: A Life, is the first book-length biography that takes into account Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the first to take her life story to the (near) present. Such a book is long overdue, and this is beautifully presented, with a stunning photographic cover portrait of Winnie Mandela, perhaps from the 1950s. The cover portrait captures the tone of the book: a tribute to a tragic heroine. Her fatal flaw in the Shakespearean tradition is perhaps her trusting nature; her fall, however, is attributed to a particular form of post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by the unrelenting, torturous pressures of the apartheid regime.