Winnie Mandela

And, what? If you have a question please ask it

And ......?

Yes I know what happens with necklacing . Thank you for explaining the victims were black, I didn't know !

anniebach Have you read about what happened with "necklacing"? The victim (black, by the way, these methods weren't used on white people) would have a petrol-filled tyre placed round his/her neck and it would be ignited. It could take up to 20 minutes for the person to die. That is pretty horrific.

It is quite possible to understand why the IRA, the ANC, and other groups fighting for equality, became so brutalised by their treatment that they adopted the same sorts of terror tactics themselves. But understanding is different from condoning.

I agree Maryeliza , not one of her critics here have said what they would have done if they had lived her life .

I have always believed the divorce of Nelson and Winnie was purely for political reasons, they continued their friendship and he asked for her when he was dying, she spent several hours with him at the end of his life . He did say he felt guilt over Winnie .

What DT and JJ say about her will do for me. I actually think that some of her severest critics on here really have no idea what apartheid really meant and how long it lasted. I’ve always despised Geoffrey Boycott over this stance on playing cricket there

Maryeliza, I couldn't believe one poster said let her rot.

Nelson Mandela Foundation

All South Africans are indebted to her, wether they acknowledge it or not.

Desmond .Tutu

She refused to be bowed by the imprisonment of her husband, the perpetual harassment of her family, detentions, bannings, banishment. Her courageous defiance
Was deeply inspirational to me and generations of activists.

Arch Bishop of Cape Town

I am humbled to have known her , I admired and respected her, May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

Jesse Jackson

In the darkest hours to free South Africa , with Nelson Mandela in prison, the face of hope and courage was Winnie Mandela . May she forever rest in power .

I agree with ab you can’t compare MLK with WM - the political context ( as bad as it was in the southern USA) was nothing like the utter evil of apartheid SA. That’s not to say I approve of violence or of some of the things she was associated with in later years but you do know don’t you that when she kept being incarcerated she was sometimes kept naked and was refused sanitary protection so that menstrual blood ran down her legs?

Okay, I wasn't talking politics , I was talking of the brutality suffered by the Black S.A. It was you who brought the political parties into it.

I was a 10 year old child in 1961.

I'm not entering further into this discussion, I've had enough of politics to last me a lifetime.

Thank you. So your family were not exciled?

Mandela said of Helen Suzman - she was undoubtedly the only real anti apartheid voice in parliament. If as you claim there were other groups fighting apartheid how come in 1961 every one in the parliament with the exception of Helen Suzman were voted out, she only scrapped through with a few hundred votes. Only the white South African had the vote so very little oposition to apartheid was there ?

When my Scottish husband who came to South Africa as a child expressed a strong desire to return to the U.K. to explore his roots.

May i ask when you left Grannyknot?

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.

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 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.

True and those best to judge them are those they lead

True Iam there are leaders and then there are Leaders.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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,