Sinethemba Sankara Bizela
The 2nd of April 2018 marks the day of Winnie Mandela’s physical departure, two years ago. There are so many departures that mark her life: leaving Bizana to Johannesburg to study medical Social Work; leaving the Madikizela family to join the Mandela’s through marriage; leaving her children to two year solitary imprisonment; forced to leave Soweto to be banished in Brandford, Free State; forced to leave her marriage (through separation and divorce), and finally dying on the 2nd April 2018. Most are forced departures, dislocations.
There are so many departures that mark her life. . .[m]ost are forced departures, dislocations
This also rhymes with her symbolic deaths she suffered under a racist apartheid regime and her patriarchal organization: banishments, torture, solitary confinement, smear campaigns and misinformation by Stratcom (an acronym for Strategic Communication, a media propaganda machinery); the demonization and disfigurements from UDF (United Democratic Front) and some liberal bloc within the ANC that were intimidated by her militancy and radical nature to the extent of reducing her to a lunatic, and an appendage to Nelson Mandela and a footnote in history of the liberation struggle (whereas a critical history of South Africa reveals her as one of the protagonists in the struggle as such).
The passing of Winnie Mandela buttresses her symbolic deaths, suggested by her representation in the public sphere that borders on present absence, which marked her entire political life. Another aspect of her spectral presence surfaces through her status as a member of parliament under the former president Jacob Zuma presidency: she became a member that never sits in the National Assembly, an honorary status which highlighted her spectral presence.
In the public sphere, Winnie’s life evokes one of Shakespeare’s character, Sycorax, in the play The Tempest. Even though Shakespeare is ambiguous about her racial identity, I interpret her as a black woman due to her demonization and silencing in the play. However, she powerfully haunts the island and the speeches of the male characters as a character herself who is excluded in the dramatis personae but talked about. We are told in the play that Sycorax was banished in Algiers due to the allegations of witchcraft, so she dies of ageing and her son, Caliban, inherits the island but gets enslaved by Prospero, an Italian duke, who usurps the island. A tale of colonial conquest, indeed. We know of Sycorax as a “witch” in Prospero’s uncontested narrative about her and the island.
Her effacement is enacted by race and gender due to racism and patriarchy of the apartheid government and the ANC
To identify Winnie Mandela as a Sycorax figure, then, is to recognize and invoke the transhistorical significations that may be relevant to a woman’s social position globally. If the mechanisms with which to silence Sycorax come in the form of allegations of witchcraft and her subsequent death due to ageing but never succeed, then Winnie Mandela shares precisely such uncanny present absences as a woman activist facing banning, demonization and solitary confinement under apartheid regime. Her effacement is enacted by race and gender due to racism and patriarchy of the apartheid government and the ANC, respectively (and this is not to say that the apartheid does not have its own). The latter does this by forcing her to the shadow of her husband, Nelson Mandela, thereby making her to enter the history of the liberation struggle based on her marriage and as a “mouthpiece” to the then incarcerated husband. But like Sycorax, Winnie Mandela’s spectral presence haunts the public by writing herself back into that very history.
The specter of Winnie continues to haunt not only the masculinized nationalist discourse but also the kraalification of party politics of the ANC, an organization that has never had a woman president or secretary general 100+ years in existence.
Winnie's story resonates with the masses of black women who suffer suppression and facing epistemic, economic and physical genocide as a class. However, her spectrality is a source of power; with it comes irrepressibility, haunting oppressive ideologies like patriarchy, and resisting entire effacement.
Winnie Mandela’s power to haunt our history and thereby bewitch the nation floats into view at FNB Stadium as the crowd cheers almost in pandemonium while her daughter, Zenani, delivers a eulogy in her funeral. A kind of cheering Winnie Mandela enjoyed herself from the branches of the ANC as she entered extremely late in the gatherings of her organization. Through the speech of her daughter, the specter of Winnie Mandela bewitches the berserk crowd as Zenani cautions us about uncontested history thereby enabling her mother to figuratively emerge out of Nelson Mandela’s shadow:
you will be forgiven for thinking that [the liberation struggle] was a man’s struggle and the men’s triumph; nothing could be far from the truth. My mother is one of the many women who rose against patriarchy, prejudice and the might of the nuclear arms’ state to bring peace and freedom we enjoy today…. As she [Winnie Mandela] said in her lifetime, “I am a product of my country and the product of my enemy.
Sinethemba Sankara Bizela is an activist and writer based in Cape Town. He was born and raised in King William's Town. He holds an MA in Literary Studies. He studied in Rhodes University and University of the Western Cape, and his research interests are on South African Studies, inspired by Postcoloniality, Marxism and Feminism.
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