On September 26, a gorgeous African woman, about whom no one is indifferent, turned 70. She has lived more lives than the proverbial Cat of nine lives. But she still manages to retain her poise, grace and popular appeal through what we can all agree is more than a fair share of personal and political trials and tribulations. She was born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela in the Village of Bizana, Pondoland, South Africa,in 1936. She became more famously known world wide as Winnie Mandela after marrying (in 1960) a divorced upwardly mobile Black Lawyer, Nelson Mandela, who later became world famous for his political activities and incarceration. It was not a ‘normal’ marriage because politics interfered with any attempt by the couple to settle down. By 1962 the apartheid state had sentenced Mandela along with his comrades to either life or long term imprisonments. Mandela remained in prison for the next 28 years becoming the symbol of the yearnings of the oppressed Black people for freedom.

He was not to see the outside of the prison walls till 1990. Two years after his release their unusual marriage ended in separation in 1992 and divorce by 1996.

Many of us grew up on Hugh Masekela’s famous tune “Bring back Nelson Mandela, bring him back home to Soweto, I want to see him walking hand in hand with Winnie Mandela……no more war”. It was never to be for long. We constructed a romantic canvass on the lives of these two people regardless of the empirical fact that they have lived apart for such a long time. At a human level it is daunting enough to catch up on almost four decades of separation let a lone such extraordinary lives lived in very public glare. Public and private disolves when it came to Winnie and Nelson.

There were those who had somehow expected that after those defiant fists that walked hand in hand with Mandela out of the Prison gates in 1990, Winnie was going to step aside, even go back to the kitchen and be ‘the good wife’. In the very public disagreements that visited their separation and divorce, Bishop Tutu famously chided her for not living up to this expectation suggesting in an unfortunate pre feminist choice of words that Mandela needed someone to bring his slippers.

It was a relationship in which everyone had an opinion and even more than a decade after the divorce opinions are still divided. Some people think it is an act of betrayal to admire Mandela and like Winnie and vice versa. But the issue cannot be that clear cut. Many struggle with admiring both and the inevitable contradictory emotions. The ambiguities are made more complicated by Mandela marrying, Graca Machel, the widow of another iconic man, Samora Machel.

Both Winnie and Graca share the double burden of being prominent in their own right but also for the men they married. It is a case of the chicken and the egg. There is an endless debate about whether these women would have been as prominent as they are if they had not married these great men. It is an argument from a reactionary ideology of patriarchy that does not value women in their own right but see them only in the shadows of men whether their fathers, uncles, brothers, husbands (or lovers) or even sons! But looking at the lives of both women they would have been prominent politically. Graca married Samora after his first wife Josina died and she was already active in the struggle for the liberation of Mozambique through FRELIMO. They married as comrades who met in the struggle.

The fact that most women married to, or in a relationship with famous men do not end up being famous should caution those who believe that Women can only be something under a man’s umbrella. Ironically those who argue this way do not argue the opposite as true. Why are Men married to famous women not famous by virtue of their sleeping arrangement too?

In the case of Winnie I doubt if anyone below the age of 50 years today would have known Nelson Mandela but for Winnie. She is the Mandela that kept Nelson in our consciousness. She did marry him young but she grew up politically mostly outside of his tentacles. By the time he came out of prison she was a political figure with a huge following in her own right. Men in general, even the greatest amongst us, consciously or unconsciously, find it difficult to adjust to famous partners. Things were not helped by the brutal battles for power within the liberation movements and the maneuvers around the transition. It was not just personal distance of many years that had to be faced but also salient political differences between a more reconciliatory Mandela and the more radical Mandela whose whole life had been shaped by confrontation with the apartheid state and also factional struggles within the movement and control of township militias.

The crux of the matter is that Winnie is generally judged by many people as a woman, wife and mother, not as a politician. How many men we greatly respect and admire and at the risk of heresy, Madiba himself, will still be standing if we apply the same gendered judgments? If the situation had been reversed and Winnie was inside and Mandela was outside would anyone had been surprised that he took interest in other Women? There is no doubt Winnie made many mistakes and made personal and political choices that are questionable. As she admitted at the prompting of Bishop Tutu in the famous encounter at the TRC: ‘Things went horribly wrong’. But who among the other liberation leaders has not made any mistake? She has been charged with everything imaginable both by the apartheid state and sadly even under the ANC government. The persecution complex is futher sttrenghtened by the ease with which previous pillars of apartheid slipped into post apartheid respectability without remorse, all in the name of National reconciliation! Without excusing Winnie’s serial lapse of judgment, it is difficult for many of her admirers including this writer not to conclude that she is being persecuted. But somehow she emerges triumphant, head unbowed. Even at 70 Winnie is neither down nor out. Perhaps her parents saw the future when they named her, Nomzano, which means ‘Trial’ in the Xhosa language. Happy birthday Mama Afrika!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
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