JOHANNESBURG— Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who like her former spouse, Nelson, endured prison and personal sacrifices for black freedom, but became a divisive figure in a democratic South Africa, died Monday. She was 81 years old.
The second wife of Mr. Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, was the public face of the fight against white-minority rule during her husband’s 27-year political imprisonment. As the attention of much of the antiapartheid movement focused on Mr. Mandela’s plight in prison, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela was herself subjected to police harassment, abuse and long periods in jail.
The Mandela family confirmed that Ms. Madikizela-Mandela died in the early hours of Monday in a Johannesburg hospital. Despite health issues in recent years, she remained active in South African politics, and the African National Congress, until her final days.
“She never doubted that the struggled for freedom and democracy would triumph and succeed,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address, visibly shaken. “She remained throughout her life a tireless advocate for the dispossessed and the marginalized. She was the voice for the voiceless.”
Ms. Madikizela-Mandela won global recognition for her struggle on behalf of the antiapartheid movement, as well as unwanted scrutiny over how she resisted white minority rule.
During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, which hastened the end of racial conflict by granting amnesty in return for testimony about crimes committed under apartheid, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela was found to have assaulted multiple victims and been involved in multiple deaths.
“Love her or hate her, Winnie Mandela is the birth mother of the new, democratic South Africa,” said Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob, author of biographies on both Ms. Madikizela-Mandela and Mr. Mandela. “She sacrificed her own and her children’s security and safety, and suffered incalculable hardship, for the ideal of freedom for her people.”
Nomzamo Zanyiwe Winifred Madikizela was born Sept. 26, 1936, in Bizana, a town in Pondoland—now part of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Her parents, both schoolteachers and farmers, raised her in a verdant village of traditional clay huts. She had the rare privilege of attending school.
Ms. Madikizela-Mandela eventually earned a degree in social work and landed a job at a Johannesburg hospital. Shortly afterward she met Mr. Mandela, a much-older lawyer, still married although separated from his first wife. Her pluck and beauty attracted him, while he stirred in her a passion for politics.
It was 1957 and Mr. Mandela had already been charged with high treason and conspiracy to overthrow the state. Their courtship was short, and although Mr. Mandela could have been sentenced to death if found guilty, the two married on June 14, 1958, at Ms. Madikizela-Mandela’s childhood home. A few years later, Mr. Mandela was sentenced to life in prison.
The Mandelas had two daughters, Zenani and Zindzi, born in 1959 and 1960. They would grow up without a father—and sometimes without a mother—a passage of time that would prove painful to all, especially Ms. Madikizela-Mandela.
More on the Mandelas
- Mandela’s Former Wives Look to Each Other for Support (Dec. 15, 2013)
- After Mandela, South Africa’s Ruling Party Struggles (Dec. 5, 2013)
- The Mystery of Nelson Mandela’s Arrest (Dec. 21, 2012)
“I shall certainly live under great strain in the coming years, but this type of living has become part and parcel of my life,” she told the New Age newspaper in 1962. “The greatest honor a people can pay to a man behind bars is to keep the freedom flame burning, to continue the fight.”
In the absence of Mr. Mandela, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela became his fiery and sometimes militant voice from behind prison bars. Her shifting political views mirrored the times. With a more moderate and conciliatory generation of black leaders inside prison, South Africa’s antiapartheid movement became less interested in compromise and more bent on confrontation.
In the mid-1970s, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela became embroiled in the student uprisings in Soweto, further riling the apartheid government, and in May 1977, she was banished to a small town called Brandfort, an apartheid stronghold in the Free State. The house she was sent to live in had no running water or electricity.
The Soweto she returned to in 1986 was a dangerous place, with young black anger at the injustices of apartheid fueling cycles of violence. Some of these young men—to whom Ms. Madikizela-Mandela gave refuge—called themselves the Mandela United Football Club, and acted as her bodyguards. But the boys were also accused of operating as a vigilante gang and unleashed a reign of terror on Soweto during the late 1980s.
“Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country,” Ms. Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying at a funeral at the time, referring to the practice of forcing a rubber tire filled with gasoline around a victim’s body and setting it on fire. The comment unleashed a hailstorm of criticism, tarnishing her image.
When Mr. Mandela was unconditionally released from prison on Feb. 11, 1990, he emerged from the gates holding Ms. Madikizela-Mandela’s hand. They both raised their fists to a roar from the crowds who had gathered to greet him.
Ms. Madikizela-Mandela was elected president of the ANC Women’s League in 1993, and in 1994 she became a member of democratic South Africa’s first parliament, even receiving an appointment in Mr. Mandela’s cabinet.
Still, their 38-year marriage soured. In 1996, Mr. Mandela divorced her, though she continued to be a presence in his life, visiting him almost daily in the hospital before his death in December 2013. Mr. Mandela had chastised himself for not being around for much of their marriage, leaving Ms. Madikizela-Mandela to raise their two daughters.
“I personally never regret the life [Winnie] and I tried to share together,” Mr. Mandela told reporters at a news conference announcing their separation in 1992. “Circumstances beyond our control however dictated it should be otherwise.”
During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in 1996 and 1997, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela denied all of the many allegations of murder and assault that were brought against her. Under pressure from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission’s chairman, she struck a somewhat remorseful note, saying she was “deeply sorry” that “things went horribly wrong.”
More trouble wasn’t far behind. In 2003, she was found guilty of fraud and theft, having exploited her position as head of the ANC Women’s League. But the sentencing magistrate compared her to a modern-day Robin Hood, acquiring loans for people who desperately needed them. Ultimately, a judge overturned her convictions for theft, and handed her a suspended sentence for the fraud verdict.
Despite the controversy and scandal, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela remained an admired and even revered figure. And she never lost that fear of speaking out.
Standing alongside Mr. Ramaphosa in Soweto last month, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela encouraged South Africans to register to vote for next year’s national election. “We are going to surprise the country,” she told reporters, dressed head to toe in ANC colors. “Watch this space. I’m back.”
—Gabriele Steinhauser contributed to this article.
Write to Alexandra Wexler at alexandra.wexler@wsj.com
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