The couple were divorced in 1996, two years after Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s President.
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She was then banished to a bleak township outside the profoundly conservative white town of Brandfort, in the Orange Free State. I will never be sorry”, she said. “I would do everything I did again if I had to.
Charming, intelligent, complex, fiery and eloquent, Madikizela-Mandela (Madikizela was her surname at birth) was inevitably known to most of the world through her marriage to the revered Mandela. She temporarily retreated from active political involvement although returned several years later.
People affectionately call her “Mama Wetu” – “Mother of the Nation” – a term of endearment and respect that stretches beyond South Africa.
The SABC state broadcaster said she had attended church in Soweto on Easter Friday before being admitted to hospital complaining of flu. In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted on fraud and theft charges and sentenced to five years in jail, though she ended up serving no time.
“It’s like a museum”, Winnie said as she gracefully walked in, wearing a traditional Xhosa dress and colorful African beaded jewelry – ceremonial mourning attire stipulated by custom and the family’s elders to honor the year of Mandela’s passing.
The President prayed that God Almighty will comfort all those who mourn the departed and grant her soul eternal rest.
Dlamini said the Mandela family was deeply grateful for the gift of her life.
South Africa is mourning the death of staunch advocate for civil rights Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Even before they were separated by Nelson Mandela’s long stay in prison, she had become politicised, being jailed for two weeks while pregnant for participating in a women’s protest against apartheid restrictions on blacks. “She was active in the ANC’s Women’s League, she was active in her community”.
Madikizela-Mandela was not the only high-profile celebrity death of 2018.
In 1977, she was sent away to the countryside and it wasn’t until 1985 that she was allowed to move back to her home in Soweto, Johannesburg.
According to him, she remained a pride not only to the African woman, but indeed all Africans. “She faced and underwent trials that would have broken the spirit of any human being, but hers was an extraordinary spirit that would not be quelled, no matter what the hardships”, said Magashule, describing the defiant spirit Madikizela-Mandela often displayed when dealing with apartheid police. In 2009 and 2014 she was voted into the national assembly.
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In 2001, a television camera caught Mbeki brushing Madikizela-Mandela away and knocking off her hat after she arrived an hour late for a rally to commemorate a 1976 anti-apartheid uprising by Soweto schoolchildren and students.
