Winnie Mandela

We were not discussing post apartheid

My nephew was in Namibia,recently,waiting for two weeks to cross the border into Zambia.He said there were lots of farmers abandoning their farms in SA and travelling through Namibia.Hundreds have been trying to petition Trump to allow them into USA.He asked my sister if it had been on the news.Very frightening for everyone.

I am also sorry Annie, but she was an evil woman. So she had a terrible early life but that is no justification for the evil acts she inflicted on people.

No, she did not have a terrible early life apart from living in apartheid S.A. She became involved with the struggle when her husband was jailed, she fought to get him released, this took her 27 years and this was her awful life . Plus the fight to free her country from apartheid ,

Yes Annie, but why are we NOT talking about post-apartheid?

Talk about it if you choose, your choice

Ok Annie, her later life then but it was no justification for her I repeat evil acts. Nothing is, we need to stop looking at her with rose tinted glasses.

I cant believe all the glory she is getting she was nasty and hid behind others after she carried out so horrific deeds, she should be left to rot

Annie I am sure it would be possible to choose an appropriate sector of anyone's life and come out with a rosy picture (or a terrible picture for that matter); surely the totality of the life should be considered when they die.

I am certaintly not looking with rose tinted glasses,I am defending a woman called evil here, she was not evil, she did wrong, but how many of you who sit in judgement of her would have or could have endured what she had to.

That may be true, but by the same token, how many of us would have done the things she is being criticised for?

It’s so easy to judge when you’re not involved and have no idea if she is good bad or ugly apart from what you read which may be distorted beyond recognition I think she did definitely make mistakes in her later life she was possible involved with violence but the woman fought her whole life against the dreadful regime in her country, she was in solitary confinement for over a year, she stood by her husband for 27 years there is no need for rose coloured glasses she was moulded by the violence she lived through
Mandela himself was a saint seeming to have no malice in his heart for his jailers, his tormentors, the killers, she was a fighter and was no saint but she wouldn’t be loved by so many if she was that bad a soul

I have asked that of myself, answer is - I don't know, I don't live in and have never lived in a country where children can be shot by police because they are black and walked on a pavement reserved for white only, where a little girl can be unrinated on by several police officers and where a priest who covers the child body to protect her can be imprisoned and then beaten to death, where a black child cannot bathe in a pool because it is for white children only, where a couple, one black one White cannot marry, cannot live together. Where a black person cannot enter a building by the same door as a white person, where a black person cannot vote,

Thinking about it a bit more, what I do acknowledge is that the state and its henchmen violated the basic human rights of all black people, including Winnie Mandela, and committed acts of brutality in order to enforce the vile system of apartheid. WM and other black activisits did not court or initiate the violence. They were the victims of it and they responded to it.

The reconciliation process meant that there should be no retaliation in law or otherwise for past illegal acts, however serious they may have been. Those police and security officers who took part in murder and torture had a low public profile and were able to resume their lives with virtually no adverse publicity attaching to them. Because Winnie Mandela was a high profile figure, her crimes were very visible.

I still believe, though, that it is a bad idea to deify people. I think we should acknowledge that everybodyh is a mixture of good and bad, that violence creates violence and that those who have spent a lifetime of oppression and ill treatment can cross the line and adopt the terror tactics of their oppressors.

Well said. I,m with you on this one.

I certainly haven't said Winnie was a saint, I just question how those who have spoken so brutally of her would have lived her life and been free from any wrong doing. Mandela would not have been released if Winnie hadn't kept fighting for him. One post said Stompie didn't have a trial, who the hell was going to arrest him ? White police officers, who would judge him ? A white judge. There was no justice for the black S.African.

Annie saying that Nelson Mandela would not have been released unless Winnie kept on fighting for it, is incorrect. Many high ranking politicians were lobbying for his release, including De Klerk, the then President of South Africa, which is why he and Nelson were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Lots of other people too of course - academics, politicians from all the parties. You make it sound as if she had some power in influencing his release, which is a contradiction, given the politics at that time.

I've been reflecting on this discussion in light of the commemoration of the murder/assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. He advocated non violence. Watching him speak still gives me the shivers, what an orator - we need people like him now more than ever.

De Clerk became president in 1989, Mandela was arrested in 1962, it was Winnie who continued his fight against apartheid along with other members of the ANC she also started the campaign to free her husband . She played a big part in her husbands release, I have not said she did it alone . One of the first in this country Peter Hain was arrested for his campaigning in his Stop The Seventies Tours in 1969, he and his parents had to flee S.A. In the mid sixties. I took part in that campaign as well as Free Mandela Campaign and the anti apartheid campaign, I met Desmond Tutu when he came here after Mandela was released. To take away Winnie's part in the freedom of the black S,African is wrong . Good grief do you not know what this woman suffered ? You dismiss her so easily

True Iam there are leaders and then there are Leaders.

True and those best to judge them are those they lead

I don't agree that those best to judge Leaders are those they lead. Are we saying that non German people can't judge Hitler for example?
Four names of Leaders I admire came into my mind as I read your comment Anniebach. Dr King, Gandhi, Churchill and Kennedy. They were all "flawed" human beings they were not perfect in any area of their lives but they were good Leaders. I particularly admire Dr King and Gandhi because of their commitment to non violent protest.

I greatly admired Dr King but even in America where segregation was evil, it was not like S.A. Dr. King was free to speak to the press, the media,

There are few Germans left who can claim to have been led by Hitler so I don't see how you claim the few Germans alive then can be compared with the number of black S.Africans who were alive in the seventies,eighties and nineties and still alive.

Much evil was done within the British Empire but no country suffered the evils suffered in S.A.

So I do think those best to judge leaders are those they lead.
History is judging Hitler. On this thread women are judging a woman who was suffered brutality no human being should suffer . Winnie was born into apartheid , the first black woman to become a social worker , married Mandela when only in her early twenties, he was an activist , he was imprisoned for all those years , only after those years in prison did he become a pacifist. I do not believe he didn't know what Winnie and the ANC were doing during his 27 years in prison, so easy to make Winnie the baddie and Mandela the saint, women have always been the harshest judges of other woman.

I am third generation South African born and bred and lived there for 50 years. South Africans of all political persuasions looked to the ANC leadership during the struggle years, and beyond, in the fervent hope of a successful transition to a free country.

I learnt a new word the other day for people who are flawed yet awesome: they are flawesome.

May i ask when you left Grannyknot?