Orphan South Africa, Winnie Mandela died

The ex wife of Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela Mandela has just died at the hospital Milpark de Johannesburg at the 81 years age following a long illness.

Hospitalized on several occasions since the beginning of the year, that which one called “the mother of the nation” left this world surrounded by its family and leaving behind it a strong but against–versed image.

Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela, known as Winnie was born in September 1936 in Bizana in the Eastern Cape Province.

In 1955, it becomes the first black social worker of the country in a hospital of Soweto, the black township of Johannesburg. It meets then Nelson Mandela whereas he was lawyer and still married then marries it later one year. The couple will have 2 girls, Zindziswa and Zenani Mandela and will divorce in 1996 after 4 years separation and many inaccuracies Winnie.

From 1962, year when Nelson Mandela is arrested and imprisoned until 1990 when it is released, it has to only raise her daughters very as a militant at the ANC (African National congress) in spite of the threats, the arrests, the obligations, the bomb attacks of its house even in period of banishment, continuing the combat against the white racist mode and sacrificing its life for the freedom of its country. Thus it became one of the largest icons of the fight against apartheid, in 1976, it called the high–school pupils of Soweto revolted “to fight until the end” and ten years later, it pleads in a against–versed way for the release of the country with matches, in reference to the torment of the “necklace” (tire ignited around the neck for those which betrayed), which makes think of an incentive with the murder.

Hardly one year after the release of Nelson Mandela, she is recognized guilty of complicity in the removal of four young people, of which is deceased, by her close guard, “Mandela United Football Club” (MUFC). Condemned to six years of prison, its sorrow will be commuted to simple fine. In 1992, it is accused of corruption and bad management and is dislocated of its leading functions to the ANC.

After the first multiracial elections of 1994, it is named vice–minister of the culture in the government of her husband but will be returned for insubordination one year afterwards. Justice continues to catch up with it since in 1998, the Commission truth and reconciliation (TRC) charged to consider the crimes political of apartheid declares it “guilty politically and morally enormous violations of the human rights” made by the MUFC. It will be then in 2003 that she will be again condemned for fraud with respect to the ANC which she will reinstate 4 years later in the Executive committee of the party.

Although elected appointed since 1994, one does not see it at the Parliament but it continues to defend the poor.

When Nelson Mandela dies in 2013, it does not leave anything to its ex–wife, she loses also the call concerning its house.

With the announcement of its death, many tributes were paid to him starting with that of the Nobel Prize of the peace Desmond Tutu which greeted a “major symbol” of the fight anti–apartheid and those of the inhabitants of the “townships” of Soweto which come to meet and sing in front of its house that it had not left.

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VERONIQUE YANG

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