Frankly, I don’t see how anyone with any common sense can still think I was wrong to denounce Winnie years ago.
It seems Nelson Mandela is proving too great a self-aggrandizing prop for some to let him go. Which brings me to his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela–Mandela. Because nobody has done more to bask in the god-like reverence that has attended the ongoing, worldwide vigil for him than she.
Most notable in this respect is the way she has assumed the role of protecting him from photo opportunists like a lioness protecting her cub from mercenary poachers.
The problem of course is that, in playing this overzealous role (as mother protector and devoted spouse), she has relegated Mandela’s current wife, Graca Machel, to a role as little more than hospital bed nurse.
(“Who the Hell Does Winnie Mandela Think She Is?!” The iPINIONS Journal, July 3, 2013)
I have written many commentaries lamenting Winnie’s metamorphosis from the putative mother of South Africa to its version of Ma Barker (think Mafia donna). But even I was shocked and appalled four years ago, when she publicly damned Mandela as a money-grubbing sellout who had let all Black South Africans down.
Here is an excerpt from “Nelson Mandela Is a Traitor and an Albatross,” March 9, 2010, in which I put her unforgivable betrayal into context:
Truth be told, there was always a disconnect between Winnie Mandela’s behavior and the Joan-of-Arc vestments she wore during the last throes of Apartheid rule in South Africa…
But anti-Apartheid supporters in the West overlooked her intemperate, boorish, and even murderous ways because we considered her a rebel with a cause…
In any event, I suspect most of us were finally disabused of all hope that she would ever reconcile her behavior with those vestments, when it became clear that neither marriage to a freed Nelson Mandela nor the Black rule for which she struggled so heroically was enough to satiate her promiscuous political ambition.
Therefore, it was clearly just a matter of time before spiteful bile came pouring out of this woman scorned – presumably not only by Nelson (who divorced her in 1996), but also by the new Black leadership (which has refused to honor her as the ‘mother of the nation’ in ways she no doubt expected).
Well, here comes the bile. It flows from an interview conducted by Nadira Naipaul (wife of internationally acclaimed Trinidadian writer V.S. Naipaul), excerpts of which were published yesterday in the London newspaper The Evening Standard.
Here are just some of the things Winnie is now saying about Mandela – a man who, by all accounts, wore the vestments of a political saint and savior as well as any mortal ever could:
This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family. You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died.
Mandela let us down… I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel with his jailer de Klerk. Hand in hand they went.
Mandela is now like a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money.
Except that the torrent of criticism I’ve received for daring to denounce Winnie has been almost as dismaying as her record of misdeeds, which incited my commentaries.
Mind you, it would be one thing if that criticism were limited to snarky tweets from twits, which so often pass for public debate these days. But having informed friends and colleagues among those criticizing gave me pause.
Which is why I wonder what these more formidable defenders of Winnie’s reputation have to say now that she’s pissing all over Mandela’s grave … while claiming title to it.
After all, she’s not only continuing her scorched-earth quest for the international fame, dynastic family, and personal fortune she forfeited decades ago; she’s also serving as godmother to political thugs (calling themselves Economic Freedom Fighters) who are doing all they can to turn South Africa into the dysfunctional mess neighboring Zimbabwe has become:
Just one year after his death, Nelson Mandela’s controversial ex-wife Winnie is launching a vicious legal battle, saying the former South African president swindled her out of her rightful inheritance – 250 acres of his ancestral homeland that includes his final resting place…
Accusing Mandela of ‘land fraud’ and ‘betrayal’, the case will inflame tensions right to the top of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).
Last week, launching her legal bid to have the land returned to her, she claimed the transfer to Mandela was carried out ‘under a cloud of darkness and secrets’ and that, although she expected nothing from his will, she did not expect to be cheated out of what was ‘rightfully’ hers.
(Daily Mail, December 21, 2014)
Alas, with Winnie competing with his children and grandchildren to profit off his legacy, I fear Nelson Mandela may never rest in peace.
But I rest my case.
Related commentaries:
Winnie…