 | |
| Author | Sisonke Msimang |
|---|---|
| Subject | Winnie Madikizela-Mandela |
| Publisher | Jonathan Ball Publishers |
Publication date | 2018 |
The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela is a biography of South African activist and politician Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, written by Sisonke Msimang in 2018. The biography "unashamedly" attempts to redeem the character of Mandela, a controversial figure. [1]
Winnie Mandela was the second wife of former South Africa President Nelson Mandela. [2] After he was imprisoned for his political activities, Winnie became his representation and continued working to end apartheid. Winnie was constantly being monitored by the government. [3] She was arrested under the Suppression of Terrorism Act. She spent over a year in solitary confinement and when she was released she continued being an activist. [3]
Winnie began to become widely known for validating deadly retaliation against citizens who cooperated with the apartheids regime. [3] The Mandela United Football Club, which was a group of her bodyguards, developed a reputation for cruelty. [3] They are said to be responsible for the abduction and killing of a 14-year-old boy named Stompie Moeketsi. [3] Winnie was also known for endorsing "necklacing" which was when a tire was placed around someone's neck and then set on fire. [4]
Extracts of the book were published in The Sydney Morning Herald [5] and News24 . [6]
Msimang's biography was published in September 2018, a month before another biography of Mandela, Truth, Lies and Alibis: A Winnie Mandela Story by Fred Bridgland. Msimang admired Mandela to a certain extent, and says she came to have a more nuanced view of Mandela. Where Mandela was typically cast either as a saint or a demon, Msimang acknowledges the good Mandela did without, she says, denying her guilt in the death of Stompie Moeketsi, or in the disappearance of two young men accused of being police informers who were abducted in 1988 and murdered soon after. Msimang's interest is in giving what she considers a more honest appraisal: Mandela's actions need to be regarded in the context of other violence condoned or enacted by the ANC and its members; in other words, she was no radical. In addition, she needs to be judged also in the light of the racism and sexism of her time; sexist double standards were often applied in judging her. Msimang disagrees with Bridgland on some factual details; for instance, Mandela's alleged culpability in the shooting death of Abu Baker Asvat is based on nothing but rumors, she wrote. [7]
Keith Gottschalk, commenting on Msimang and Bridgland books in a review article published originally in The Conversation , did not criticize or praise either one, focusing on the difference between the two books, and to which extent they indicated that the controversy over Mandela's life and work continues. [7] Heribert Adam, writing on the same two books for the London Review of Books , does give explicit criticism in an extensive review. Noting that Msimang explicitly wanted to redeem Mandela (whereas Bridgland says he focuses on the victims of her actions), he comments that her interest, as she explained to him in an email message, was not so much in the facts but rather in the meaning of Mandela for South Africans. He criticizes her for denying the evidence that, according to Adam, points at Mandela's guilt in the murder of Asvat. But he is most critical of what he sees as a failure to actually hold Mandela to account: "Msimang fails to resolve a crucial contradiction in her argument: if Winnie was indeed the independent, free and politically committed person she portrays, she can also be held responsible for her deeds--something Msimang refuses to do." [8]
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003, and from 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation".
Albertina SisuluOMSG was a South African anti-apartheid activist. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), she was the founding co-president of the United Democratic Front. In South Africa, where she was affectionately known as Ma Sisulu, she is often called a mother of the nation.
Necklacing is a method of extrajudicial summary execution and torture carried out by forcing a rubber tire drenched with petrol around a victim's chest and arms, and setting it on fire. The term "necklace" originated in the 1980s in black townships of apartheid South Africa where suspected apartheid collaborators were publicly executed in this fashion.
The following lists events that happened during 1991 in South Africa.
The African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) is an auxiliary women's political organization of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa. This organization has its precedent in the Bantu Women's League, and it oscillated from being the Women's Section to the Women's League from its founding, through the exile years, and in a post-apartheid South Africa. After women were allowed to become members of the ANC in 1943, the ANCWL was created as the means by which Black South African women could contribute to the national liberation struggle by channeling Black women's political activity into the ANC by way of the ANCWL.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is the Research Chair in Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She graduated from Fort Hare University with a bachelor's degree and an Honours degree in psychology. She obtained her master's degree in Clinical Psychology at Rhodes University. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral thesis, entitled "Legacies of violence: An in-depth analysis of two case studies based on interviews with perpetrators of a 'necklace' murder and with Eugene de Kock", offers a perspective that integrates psychoanalytic and social psychological concepts to understand extreme forms of violence committed during the apartheid era. Her main interests are traumatic memories in the aftermath of political conflict, post-conflict reconciliation, empathy, forgiveness, psychoanalysis and intersubjectivity. She served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). She currently works at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein as a senior research professor.
James Seipei, also known as Stompie Moeketsi or Stompie Sepei, was a teenage United Democratic Front (UDF) activist from Parys, South Africa. He and three other boys were kidnapped on 29 December 1988 by members of Winnie Mandela's bodyguards. He was murdered on 1 January 1989, the only one of the boys to be killed.
Fred Bridgland is a British writer and biographer. During the Angolan Civil War, he wrote about South Africa's involvement in Angola and in the 1990s he revealed human rights abuses committed by UNITA rebels under the command of Jonas Savimbi. Critics have derided his biography of Savimbi, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa, as the work of an apologist. Bridgland has denied this claim in interviews, saying rather he was just a biographer.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Municipality, formerly Mbizana Municipality, is a local municipality within the Alfred Nzo District Municipality, in the Wild Coast Region of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is named after Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist and wife of President Nelson Mandela.
Bonginkosi Success Madikizela is a South African politician.
Winnie Mandela is a 2011 South African-Canadian historical drama film starring Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard as Winnie and Nelson Mandela. Based on Anne Marie du Preez Bezrob's biography Winnie Mandela: A Life, the film is directed by Darrell Roodt and co-stars Wendy Crewson, Elias Koteas and Justin Strydom. Image Entertainment released the film in theaters on September 6, 2013. It received generally negative reviews.
Amina CachaliaOLB was a South African anti-Apartheid activist, women's rights activist, and politician. She was a longtime friend and ally of former President Nelson Mandela.
Zindziswa "Zindzi" Mandela, also known as Zindzi Mandela-Hlongwane, was a South African diplomat and poet, and the daughter of anti-apartheid activists and politicians Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Zindzi was the youngest and third of Nelson Mandela's three daughters, including sister Zenani Mandela.
Abu Baker Asvat, also known as Abu Asvat or Abu nicknamed Hurley was a South African medical doctor who practised in Soweto in the 1970s and 1980s. A founding member of Azapo, Asvat was the head of its health secretariat, and involved in initiatives aimed at improving the health of rural black South Africans during Apartheid.
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Devikarani Priscilla Sewpal Jana was a South African human rights lawyer, politician and diplomat. As a member of the African National Congress (ANC) during the anti-apartheid movement, she participated in both legal activism as well as in the underground movement to end apartheid. She represented many significant figures in the movement, including South African president Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Steve Biko, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Jana was one of the very few South Africans who had access to political prisoners, including Mandela, in the maximum security Robben Island prison, and served as an emissary for coded messages between the political prisoners and the ANC leadership.
Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer, activist and political analyst based in Perth, Western Australia, whose focus is on race, gender, and politics. She is known for her memoir Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018), a biography of anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
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