I have been at home all day watching this rich Netflix Documentary on the fiery Winnie Mandela
Apart from its depth and super production quality, the documentary not only brought back the issue of Apartheid to me, but it also brought about the complexity of the relationship between Winnie and Nelson while also throwing up issues of relationships, trust, and sacrifice within the vortex of a public life
Winnie’s two granddaughters hosted the documentary and I was wondering how they would treat the darkening issues of her sexual dalliances and the grim murder trials
I should not have worried, cos the documentary treated those parts in such detail
We were taken into the very scary Mandela Football Club, which has been alleged to have carried out a lot of heinous crimes while using the Mandela home as a base
We were shown Winnie quickly kiss the young lawyer she was said to have been in a sexual relationship with and a letter to him penned by her showing frustration and betrayal was also tendered
This and the growing criminal trials and much more importantly their differences in approach towards the issue of Apartheid – Nelson had started preaching peace while Winnie was headlong in a violent approach – led to the celebration and one of the most emotional parts of the documentary for me
At Nelson’s inauguration as President of SA, Winnie was left in the crowd with her daughter taking the podium with her father
This was heart-wrenching, especially if you take into consideration the struggle Winnie went through to keep the fight alive after Nelson and the total head of the ANC were either obliterated or in jail
Winnie had decided to marry the Nation instead of leaving Nelson at his conviction
She jumped into the struggle earning a series of sanctions, bans, detentions, imprisonments etc
She got her lines barred, movements restricted, homes firebombed and months and years of solitary confinement, all without breaking her
She stood in the midst of these attacks and earned the sobriquet Mother of the Nation
On Nelson’s release, she took all of three hours to get her hair done before heading to him where he had insisted that he wanted to walk out of the prison holding hands with her
The documentary treated the Truth Commission very beautifully, the witnesses, the submissions and the killing of Stompie were also well treated
Winnie never got that shackle off her neck as fmr members of the Football Court actually fingered her as being the one behind the killings
Winnie was stupendously beautiful, and I continued to engage with her beauty as a young woman
She had lithe skin with a pointed nose, tall and striking shape which came with moderate breasts and a cuddly bottom.
How the men didn’t give her life some stress beats me
If they did, that would have been the authorities’ main weapon to break Nelson in jail
For me, she was the struggle and not Nelson.
Nelson was her John the Baptist, he only introduced her and she took it from there and for 27 years, she held out, kept the struggle on the front burner while the ANC and its leaders cooled themselves in jail
She never positioned herself as a saint and came at us with all the burnished exposure of a burnt saint
Violence was her weapon, frailties of human sexuality were her bedmate but all of these didn’t take anything from her legacy
This is why the documentary opened with her burial which was as big as Nelson’s, positioning her as the true mother of the Nation
Nelson could not forgive her not cos she cheated but cos he came to the realisation that she never married him in the first place but married the Nation and he got jealous.
Simple
Duke of Shomolu
Last modified: April 27, 2026
