Tuesday 2 April 2013

Re: [wanabidii] Re: How Nelson Mandela betrayed us, says ex-wife Winnie

How touching.

On 4/2/13, Maurice Oduor <mauricejoduor@gmail.com> wrote:
> A very touching story this is !!!!!
>
> Courage
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Tracy John <tracykwetu@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 9:41 AM, Ahmed Kateregga Musaazi <
>> katereggamusaazi.ahmed@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Winnie mandela has potential of a female President of an African state.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 6:14 AM, Robukui <robukui@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It is the ANC that has underperformed.
>>>>
>>>> Too many communists and Marxists still in the ranks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sent from Samsung Mobile
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> John <kaygigs@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> She is the one that betrayed the ANC by sleeping around and committing
>>>> all
>>>> those crimes that tarnished the name of the party.
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>> *From:* Afuwa Kasule <kkiberu@googlemail.com>
>>>> *To:* Ugandans-at-Heart@googlegroups.com
>>>> *Cc:* owanatone@yahoo.com
>>>> *Sent:* Monday, April 1, 2013 6:56 AM
>>>> *Subject:* [UAH] How Nelson Mandela betrayed us, says ex-wife Winnie
>>>>
>>>> How Nelson Mandela betrayed us, says ex-wife Winnie
>>>> Trial of unity: Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie arriving at the
>>>> Rand Supreme Court, Johannesburg, in 1991 to hear charges against Winnie
>>>> of
>>>> kidnap and assault against 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi
>>>> View
>>>> Gallery<http://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html?action=gallery>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>> 08 March 2010
>>>> My husband and I have just crossed Africa. On the final leg of our
>>>> journey we had finally come to South Africa - a place that now went hand
>>>> in
>>>> hand with the name Mandela.
>>>> My husband had been reluctant to come here but then he had followed
>>>> his instinct and it had brought us to the Soweto door of the mystifying
>>>> Winnie Mandela, a much celebrated and reviled woman of our times.
>>>> Looking out at her garden, I wondered how long we would have to wait to
>>>> see her. We were in a stronghold of sorts, with high enclosing walls
>>>> and
>>>> electronic gates which were controlled from inside a bunker-like
>>>> guardhouse. There were tall muscular men dressed in black who casually
>>>> appeared and disappeared.
>>>> In the late Eighties, Winnie's thuggish bodyguards, the Mandela United
>>>> Football Club, terrorised Soweto. Club "captain" was Jerry Richardson,
>>>> who
>>>> died in prison last year while serving life for the murder of Stompie
>>>> Moeketsi, a 14-year-old who was kidnapped with three other boys and
>>>> beaten
>>>> in the home where we would soon sit, sipping coffee. Winnie was
>>>> sentenced
>>>> to six years for kidnap, which was reduced to a fine on appeal.
>>>> Members of the gang would later testify to South Africa's Truth and
>>>> Reconciliation Commission that Winnie had ordered the torture, murder
>>>> and
>>>> kidnap of her own people, and even participated directly.
>>>> Winnie used to live, before she was famous, down one of the narrow,
>>>> congested streets with small brick and iron
>>>> sheet<http://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html#>houses.
>>>> Soweto is still a predominately black township: tourists come in
>>>> buses to gawp at the streets linked to freedom, apartheid and Mandela.
>>>> Winnie now has an imposing fortress on the hill. The garden is full of
>>>> trees and well-manicured shrubs. We walked straight into a small
>>>> cluttered
>>>> hallway. It was full of the man: Mandela. He was everywhere. Presents,
>>>> portraits, honorary degrees and letters covering every empty space on
>>>> the
>>>> walls.
>>>> There was an air of expectancy as we entered. Our fixer had arranged
>>>> this meeting with Winnie (or Mama Mandela, her township name) through
>>>> her
>>>> confidant and admirer. He is a young man in his early forties who is a
>>>> well-known television presenter here and clearly an ardent devotee.
>>>> He sat us down and talked softly about her. The politics of his
>>>> generation, he said, had been defined by this woman. Her courage, her
>>>> fire
>>>> and her sheer stubbornness had made them men. They saw how unafraid she
>>>> was
>>>> and the risks and humiliations she was willing to absorb. These
>>>> humiliations had not ended with apartheid. She was discarded, demonised
>>>> and
>>>> betrayed, he said.
>>>> My nerves were playing up: my husband does not like to be kept waiting
>>>> at the best of times. He is punctilious and has been known to walk away
>>>> from a delayed meeting, leaving me to deal with the fallout.
>>>> It was at that moment she appeared, tall, carefully attired in soft
>>>> grey, wearing her signature wig. She held Vidia's outstretched hand and
>>>> asked him to sit
>>>> next<http://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html#>to
>>>> her. She flashed a smile in my direction. The air was electrified by
>>>> her
>>>> presence.
>>>> I did what was expected of me. I asked her if she was happy with the
>>>> way
>>>> things had panned out in South Africa. Winnie looked at my husband. Did
>>>> he
>>>> wish for the truth? She had heard of him. He pursued the truth or the
>>>> closest he could get to it.
>>>> No, she was not happy. And she had her reasons. "I kept the movement
>>>> alive," she began. "You have been in the township. You have seen how
>>>> bleak
>>>> it still is. Well, it was here where we flung the first stone. It was
>>>> here
>>>> where we shed so much blood. Nothing could have been achieved without
>>>> the
>>>> sacrifice of the people. Black people."
>>>> She looked at Vidia expecting another question. He said nothing, but
>>>> his
>>>> dark hooded eyes shone and she carried on with her eyes firmly locked
>>>> onto
>>>> his face. "The ANC was in exile. The entire leadership was on the run or
>>>> in
>>>> jail. And there was no one to remind these people, black people, of the
>>>> horror of their daily reality; when something so abnormal as apartheid
>>>> becomes a daily reality. It was our reality. And four generations had
>>>> lived
>>>> with it - as non-people."
>>>> As she spoke, I looked at her thinking she was, at 73, as her
>>>> reputation
>>>> promised, quite extraordinary. The ANC had needed this passionate
>>>> revolutionary. Without her, the fire would have been so easily
>>>> extinguished
>>>> and she had used everything and anything to stoke it. While some still
>>>> refer to her as Mother of the Nation, she is decried by many because of
>>>> her
>>>> links to the Stompie murder and other violent crimes during the
>>>> apartheid
>>>> era, and a conviction for fraud.
>>>> "Were you not afraid?" I asked instinctively, but then I regretted this
>>>> foolish query.
>>>> She looked towards my chair. Her grey glasses focused on my face. "Yes,
>>>> I was afraid in the beginning. But then there is only so much they can
>>>> do
>>>> to you. After that it is only death. They can only kill you, and as you
>>>> see, I am still here."
>>>> I knew that the apartheid enforcers had done everything in their power
>>>> to break this woman. She had suffered every indignity a person could
>>>> bear.
>>>> They had picked her up in the night and placed her under house arrest
>>>> in
>>>> Brandfort, a border town in Orange Free State, 300 miles from Soweto.
>>>> "It
>>>> was exile," she said, "when everything else had failed."
>>>> At this remote outpost, where she spent nine years, she had recruited
>>>> young men for the party. "Right under their noses," she said to Vidia,
>>>> laughing with the memory of it. "The only worry or pain I had was for
>>>> my
>>>> daughters. Never really knowing what was happening to them. I feel they
>>>> have really suffered in all this. Not me or Mandela," she said.
>>>> Her two young daughters had never quite understood what was really
>>>> happening. Bad men went to prison. Their father was in prison but he
>>>> was
>>>> not bad. "That anguish was unbearable for me as a mother, not knowing
>>>> how
>>>> my children coped when they held me in long solitary confinement."
>>>> Zenani, now 51, and Zindzi, 50, remain very much in the background,
>>>> having no wish to enter politics themselves, Winnie said. Nelson Mandela
>>>> is
>>>> no longer "accessible" to his daughters and they have to get through
>>>> much
>>>> red tape just to speak to their father, she told us.
>>>> Winnie brought up his name very casually, as if it was of no real value
>>>> to her: not any more.
>>>> "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. Many unsung
>>>> and
>>>> unknown heroes of the struggle, and there were others in the leadership
>>>> too, like poor Steve Biko, who died of the beatings, horribly all
>>>> alone.
>>>> Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young
>>>> revolutionary. But look what came out," she said, looking to the writer.
>>>> He
>>>> said nothing but listened.
>>>> It is hard to knock a living legend. Only a wife, a lover or a mistress
>>>> has that privilege. Only they are privy to the intimate inner man, I
>>>> thought.
>>>> "Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks.
>>>> Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much
>>>> 'white'. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in
>>>> the
>>>> struggle have died unrewarded."
>>>> She was pained. Her uncreased brown face had lost the softness.
>>>> "I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel [Peace Prize in
>>>> 1993] with his jailer [FW] de Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you
>>>> think
>>>> de Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The
>>>> times
>>>> dictated it, the world had changed, and our struggle was not a flash in
>>>> the
>>>> pan, it was bloody to say the least and we had given rivers of blood. I
>>>> had
>>>> kept it alive with every means at my disposal".
>>>> We could believe that. The world-famous images flashed before our eyes
>>>> and I am sure hers. The burning tyres - Winnie endorsed the necklacing
>>>> of
>>>> collaborators in a speech in 1985 ("with our boxes of matches and our
>>>> necklaces we shall liberate this country") - the stoning, the bullets,
>>>> the
>>>> terrible deaths of "informers". Her often bloodthirsty rhetoric has
>>>> marred
>>>> her reputation.
>>>> "Look at this Truth and Reconciliation charade. He should never have
>>>> agreed to it." Again her anger was focused on Mandela. "What good does
>>>> the
>>>> truth do? How does it help anyone to know where and how their loved
>>>> ones
>>>> were killed or buried? That Bishop Tutu who turned it all into a
>>>> religious
>>>> circus came here," she said pointing to an empty chair in the distance.
>>>> "He had the cheek to tell me to appear. I told him a few home truths. I
>>>> told him that he and his other like-minded cretins were only sitting
>>>> here
>>>> because of our struggle and ME. Because of the things I and people like
>>>> me
>>>> had done to get freedom."
>>>> Winnie did appear before the TRC in 1997, which in its report judged
>>>> her
>>>> to have been implicated in murders: "The commission finds Mandela
>>>> herself
>>>> was responsible for committing such gross violations of human rights."
>>>> When begged by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to admit that "things went
>>>> horribly wrong" and apologise, Winnie finally said sorry to Stompie's
>>>> mother and to the family of her former personal doctor whose killing she
>>>> is
>>>> alleged to have ordered after he refused to cover up Stompie's murder.
>>>> Someone brought in the coffee and we took the offered cups in silence.
>>>> "I am not alone. The people of Soweto are still with me. Look what they
>>>> make him do. The great Mandela. He has no control or say any more. They
>>>> put
>>>> that huge statue of him right in the middle of the most affluent
>>>> "white"
>>>> area of Johannesburg. Not here where we spilled our blood and where it
>>>> all
>>>> started. Mandela is now a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out
>>>> globally
>>>> to collect the money and he is content doing that. The ANC have
>>>> effectively
>>>> sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of
>>>> appearance."
>>>> The eyes behind the grey tinted glasses were fiery with anger. It was
>>>> an
>>>> economic betrayal, she was saying, nothing had changed for the blacks,
>>>> except that apartheid had officially gone. As she spoke of betrayal she
>>>> inadvertently looked at a portrait of Mandela.
>>>> I looked at Winnie. Maybe she did not know when to stop. Maybe that is
>>>> the bane of a revolutionary: they gather such momentum that he or she
>>>> can't
>>>> stop. I saw that although her trials and tribulations had been
>>>> recorded,
>>>> the scars on the inner, most secret part of her spirit tormented her.
>>>> But for Winnie the deaths, the burning tyres around the necks of the
>>>> informers and her own Faustian pacts perhaps made Mandela and his
>>>> vaunted
>>>> wisdom look like feeble compromises from a feeble man. No one could
>>>> expect
>>>> him to protect her or his children from his 27-year incarceration but
>>>> now
>>>> he was out he had wanted peace. He had longings, perhaps scars in the
>>>> mind,
>>>> fears and perhaps even wisdom that she could not match or return.
>>>> The rumour rife in South Africa was that she could not abide him or
>>>> touch him during their two-year attempt to salvage the marriage after
>>>> his
>>>> release in 1990. It was all too sad. And though he had been prepared to
>>>> forgive the past, his wife's affairs while he was in prison, it had not
>>>> worked. They divorced in 1996, having spent only five of their 38
>>>> married
>>>> years together. Her anger was a mighty liability and her defiance was
>>>> too
>>>> awful for words.
>>>> "I am not sorry. I will never be sorry. I would do everything I did
>>>> again if I had to. Everything." She paused.
>>>> I thought of the terrible shadow of the murder of Stompie. Winnie had
>>>> flung the stone that had cracked the one-way mirror of apartheid. The
>>>> "interrogators", the compromisers, were now all unmasked and for what?
>>>> "You know, sometimes I think we had not thought it all out. There was
>>>> no
>>>> planning from our side. How could we? We were badly educated and the
>>>> leadership does not acknowledge that. Maybe we have to go back to the
>>>> drawing board and see where it all went wrong."
>>>> This was Winnie the politician. This was the phoenix. Publicly, the ANC
>>>> leadership, who made her a minister in the first post-apartheid
>>>> government
>>>> in 1994 and welcomed her back subsequently, distanced themselves from
>>>> her
>>>> amid allegations of corruption (in 2003, she was convicted of fraud and
>>>> given a suspended prison sentence). But for the masses, she spoke their
>>>> language and remains popular with those who feel their government
>>>> hasn't
>>>> done enough.
>>>> We could see why the ANC had needed this obdurate woman. She was bold
>>>> and had an idea of her worth. She was the perfect mistress for the ANC
>>>> in
>>>> the bad times but then she became dangerous.
>>>> As we stood up to leave, we saw a photograph of a young Winnie looking
>>>> wistfully into the camera. She was ravishingly beautiful and Mandela
>>>> had
>>>> sought her. But the battle was over. She had played her part. It was
>>>> over.
>>>> She had been sidelined and discarded, but since the freedom had not
>>>> brought
>>>> the promised dream for the vast black population, she would continue to
>>>> play her hand in politics. Of that I was sure. She was still a woman
>>>> who
>>>> could reflect the dangerous part of a man's dream, whatever it may be.
>>>> "When I was born my mother was very disappointed. She wanted a son. I
>>>> knew that from a very early age. So I was a tomboy. I wanted to be a
>>>> doctor
>>>> at some point and I was always bringing home strays from school. People
>>>> who
>>>> were too poor to pay fees or have food. My parents never rebuked me or
>>>> told
>>>> me that they were hard-pressed, too."
>>>> She lit up talking of her past and of early memories that had nothing
>>>> to
>>>> do with the struggle. And then she suddenly turned towards Vidia and
>>>> said:
>>>> "But when I am alone I cannot help but think of the past. The past is
>>>> still
>>>> alive in here. In my head." She pointed to the brain.
>>>> Was it all nothing but a great loss? I wanted to know. Part of me ached
>>>> for her. As a woman I felt her great transgressions and the pain. I
>>>> wanted
>>>> to tell her that if I had been Mandela I would have forgiven her but I
>>>> lacked the courage. What would Vidia say to me if I did?
>>>> He was saying goodbye. My eyes were filling. Instinctively she turned
>>>> and looked into me and her eyes softened. She walked towards me and
>>>> pulled
>>>> me into her embrace. "I know what you want to say," she whispered into
>>>> my
>>>> ear, "and for that I am grateful."
>>>>
>>>> http://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *Without God, our week would be: Sinday, Mournday, Tearsday,Wasteday,
>>>> Thirstday, Fightday & Shatterday. Remember seven days without God makes
>>>> one
>>>> WEAK!!"And if Allah touches you with harm, none can remove it but He,
>>>> and if He touches you with good, then He is Able to do all things."
>>>> (6:17)
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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