Winnie Mandela

Though best known as the wife of South African president Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela also fought against her country's apartheid system for decades, and served as a member of the South African Parliament, often under a cloud of controversy, in the 1990s and 2000s. Born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela on September 26, 1936 in Bizana, a village in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, she was one of nine children by parents who worked as teachers. After completing high school in Bizana, Mandela earned a degree in social work from the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work and later, a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand; though she received a scholarship to continue her studies in America, Mandela decided to take a job as a social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg. While there, she met and married attorney Nelson Mandela, who was at the time the head of the African National Congress (ANC) The organization's attempts to end South Africa's practice of segregation known as apartheid put him in the government's crosshairs, and he was arrested on numerous occasions before receiving a life sentence in 1964. In her husband's absence, Winnie Mandela continued to support anti-apartheid efforts, for which she was frequently detained by the government; in 1969, she was arrested under the Suppression of Terrorism Act and sentenced to a year in solitary confinement and routinely tortured at Pretoria Central Prison. Despite this brutal treatment, Mandela continued to remain politically active after her release, which resulted in further imprisonment and from 1977 to 1985, forced exile and house arrest in the border town of Brandfort. Upon her return to Soweto, Mandela eschewed the democratic approach of anti-apartheid organizations like the United Democratic Front (UDF), favoring instead a more punitive response to the apartheid government that included support for the brutal practice of necklacing, in which a person is burned alive using tires and gasoline. Her faction of bodyguards, known as the Mandela United Football Club, was also accused of kidnapping on murder on several occasions, which resulted in the firebombing of her house in 1988, public condemnation by the ANC and UDF and a six-year sentence for her role in the kidnapping and murder of two teenagers that was reduced to a fine. Her profile appeared to improve briefly after her husband's historic release from prison in 1990, but their marriage soon faltered under allegations of infidelity on her part and ended in divorce in 1996; she was also removed from her positions as the head of the ANC social welfare department and deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology. Despite the controversy that swirled around her, Mandela remained popular with ANC supporters, who elected her as president of its Women's League in 1997. But new allegations of mishandled campaign donations, for which she was found guilty in 2002, further tarnished her political standing, and in 2004, she was sentenced to five years in prison for multiple counts of fraud and theft, which was eventually reduced to a three-years suspended sentence. Though elected to the ANC's National Executive Committee in 2007, her standing within the organization was greatly reduced, and she was viewed largely as a link between the party and supporters in lower economic circles. Her final years were marked by acrimony, either real or allegedly fabricated, with the ANC, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and her ex-husband, all of whom she was accused of denigrating in interviews in 2010 and 2012. Mandela spent much of 2018 battling health issues related to diabetes, multiple surgeries and a kidney infection; she eventually succumbed on April 2, 2018 in Johannesburg. Her standing with the people of South Africa was reflected in a state-sponsored public funeral, where many political figures defended her long history of the fight for civil rights.