TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042792/04279931.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 5.6 KB | 116 lines

                                                                                SOUTH AFRICA, Page 47

Winnie's Walk into Obscurity


Why Nelson Mandela -- and the A.N.C. -- could not live with his
wife any longer

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town


    Put politics aside and consider only the personal. In
1957 Winnie, a fiery but naive 22-year-old, meets Nelson, a
soft-spoken, redoubtable lawyer 16 years her senior. Nelson is
so committed to his revolutionary work that from the very start
Winnie knows, "He didn't belong to me; he was the people's man."
Still, after a few months' courtship, she agrees to marry him.
During the next six years, Nelson's run-ins with apartheid
authorities enable the couple to spend only four months together
before he is packed off to prison. Over the next two decades,
they see each other twice a year; in 1982 the isolation is
eased a little when they are allowed to meet for 40 minutes a
week. When Nelson is finally freed in 1990, they resume their
life together -- but instead of prison guards monitoring their
every exchange, the whole world is watching.

    Now comes word that Winnie and Nelson are separating. Were
they any other couple, the real news would be that their
marriage lasted as long as it did. But these are the Mandelas,
black South Africa's First Couple, which means that it is
impossible to separate the political from the personal. At a
press conference, Nelson vaguely attributed the separation to
"tensions that have arisen owing to differences" on a number of
issues. The breakup, he insisted, had not been prompted by new
claims against Winnie -- among them, allegations of murder --
and he pledged her his "unstinting support," imploring that all
"conjecture" about their relationship should cease. In other
words, he was arguing, this is strictly personal. His appeal
might have been more convincing if Nelson had not been flanked
by top leaders of the African National Congress, over which he
presides.

    Perhaps the "tensions" really are personal: after 27 years
apart, each coping separately with loneliness, there may have
been few pieces of the marriage to put back together. But the
political ramifications are inescapable. In recent years, A.N.C.
colleagues have increasingly regarded Winnie as a loose cannon
who drinks too much, spends too freely and covets power too
jealously. Some of her frontal assaults on apartheid ran counter
to the organization's softening image. Last May she was
convicted and sentenced to a six-year prison term for her
involvement in the kidnapping and assault of four Soweto youths,
one of whom, "Stompie" Seipei, was later found dead. In recent
weeks two of her co-defendants have recanted testimony that gave
Winnie an alibi at the time Seipei was tortured, and accused her
of initiating the fatal beating. A third defendant, who fled to
Zambia before the trial, weighed in long-distance with charges
that implicated her in the murder of a Soweto doctor who refused
to treat Seipei's injuries, insisting that the boy required
hospitalization. Winnie calls the charges a "campaign of
vilification."

    In private, A.N.C. officials say Winnie had become a
political liability. She refused to take orders from the A.N.C.
or her husband, and many colleagues feared she was completely
out of control. With negotiations over the formation of a
multiracial interim government at a delicate stage, white
right-wingers gleefully cited Winnie's alleged behavior as
evidence that blacks are too irresponsible to play a serious
role. She was, as one A.N.C. leader put it, "a millstone around
our necks."

    If Winnie's political activities engender little sympathy,
her personal plight deserves greater compassion. Thrust at a
young age into a highly public role, she proved a brave and
audacious dissident, respected abroad for her gutsy defiance of
apartheid and revered at home as the "Mother of the Nation."
Upon her return to Soweto in 1985 from eight years of internal
exile, however, her self-discipline began to crack. She
surrounded herself with thuggish young bodyguards, setting up
as judge and jury in local disputes; had herself squired around
in a gold-colored BMW; and publicly embraced violent, militant
practices that her husband shunned. Rumors proliferated that she
drank and philandered. Smitten by her own press notices, she
seemed to envision herself as a black Evita who would succeed
Nelson.

    Despite these warning signs of instability, Winnie largely
managed to uphold the Mandela name with distinction until Nelson
left prison. When attention shifted from her to him, she began
to self-destruct. In context, her increasingly volatile and
imperious behavior is not altogether surprising. For so many
years, she had fended for herself, facing down 16 months in
solitary confinement and constant police harassment to raise two
daughters and two grandchildren. When Nelson walked free, the
patriarchal A.N.C. leaders -- Nelson included -- assumed that
Winnie would now recede into the background, becoming Patient
Griselda, the dutiful wife. It was a strange assumption, given
her history. As she said in 1986, "I am the most unmarried
married woman."

    Now she is truly an unmarried woman, though it remains
unclear if a divorce will follow. Last week Winnie resigned as
head of the A.N.C.'s social-welfare department, and her days as
a political power broker are over. At worst, she will face new
charges and could go to prison for longer than six years. At
best, she will win her pending appeal, and then fade into
obscurity -- a personal tragedy for a woman so intensely
political.