Teaching Complexity Through the Life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
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Bridgewater Review Volume 37 Issue 2 Article 4 11-2018 Nomzamo: Teaching Complexity through the Life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Meghan Healy-Clancy Follow this and additional works at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Healy-Clancy, Meghan (2018). Nomzamo: Teaching Complexity through the Life of Winnie Madikizela- Mandela. Bridgewater Review, 37(2), 4-9. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol37/iss2/4 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Nomzamo: Teaching Complexity through the Life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Meghan Healy-Clancy hen Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed away in early April 2018, I was teaching Wmy seminar on Apartheid and the Anti- Apartheid Movement. I have been studying apartheid for well over a decade, but I am always surprised by the excitement and challenge of teaching about it. Before Winnie Mandela (Photo in Public Domain). my class, students have rarely learned much about the only through the lives of “great men,” racist regime that ruled South Africa from 1948 to but also through the lives of women? 1994, or about the global human rights movement How does change look different when viewed “from above”—from the van- that tenaciously fought to transform South Africa into tage point of high politics—and “from an inclusive democracy. But students often come into below”—through people’s everyday experiences? Ultimately, what are my class convinced of one thing: apartheid ended the personal costs of participating in a primarily because of the heroic actions of one man, world-historic revolution? Nelson Mandela. No one challenged the great man nar- rative of South African history centered I aim for students to leave my class unheralded South Africans, who reveal on Nelson Mandela more than his grasping the complexity of anti-apart- that apartheid ended through decades former wife. “Mandela was extricated heid activism—both in and far beyond of struggle, shaped by many forms of from the masses,” Madikizela-Mandela the campaigns to which Mandela was both heroism and villainy. This April, told London Review of Books journalist central. The anti-apartheid movement we talked more than ever about the late Stephen Smith in 2013, in an interview drew upon Christianity and commu- Madikizela-Mandela. featured in Smith’s “Mandela: Death of nism; it enlisted families in boycott For no one emblematized the complex- a Politician” (2014). “He was made an campaigns and militants in bombing ity of anti-apartheid activism more than idol, almost Jesus Christ! This is non- campaigns. It rallied ordinary peo- the woman known before her mar- sense, a lot of nonsense. The freedom of ple—especially young people—from riage as Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe this country was attained by the masses Soweto to university campuses in Madikizela: her isiXhosa first name of this country… It was attained by Massachusetts; it eventually captured can aptly be interpreted as “mother of women who were left to fend for their the moral imagination of the world. struggle.” It is not only that she embod- families… We are the ones who fought And it culminated in a democratic ied the difficulties of commitment to the enemy physically, who went out transition that no one expected: a the anti-apartheid movement, which to face their bullets. The leaders were transition at once remarkably peace- South Africans call “The Struggle,” cushioned behind bars. They don’t ful in Pretoria’s corridors of power, and served as “mother of the nation.” It know. They never engaged the enemy and filled with enduring violence is also that seeing the liberation move- on the battlefield.” and tension in communities across ment through her perspective is itself South Africa. I teach this complex- Students initially tend to find her a struggle, causing students to grapple ity by bringing an array of voices to critique shocking. Her claim that with core questions of social history class, through primary sources rang- “leaders were cushioned” on Robben that transcend South Africa. How do ing from manifestos to songs. My Island, the prison off the coast of Cape we understand political transformations students encounter many famous and Town where Mandela spent most of his differently when we examine them not 4 Bridgewater Review 27 years of confinement, is offensive. that her ex-husband and other politi- Communist Party, key members Mandela nearly went blind from the cal prisoners had “never engaged the of which spent decades in prison glare of the sun during forced labor enemy on the battlefield” is absurd. beside him. in the prison’s limestone quarry. He Mandela was imprisoned for leading Yet, as students reflect more fully on and other prisoners endured violence the sabotage campaign of Umkhonto the anti-apartheid movement, they and periods of solitary confinement, we Sizwe (“Spear of the People,” or begin to understand her perspec- and many never expected to leave, as MK), a militant organization founded tive. Robben Island was a political Mandela detailed in his 1994 memoir by the African National Congress prison, but resilient prisoners turned Long Walk to Freedom. Her suggestion (ANC) and the South African it into “Robben Island University.” They played soccer and discussed Shakespeare. Activists without formal schooling—including future president Jacob Zuma—were tutored by univer- sity-educated prisoners like Mandela. And above all, they talked politics and organized to protest prison policies. Loyalties forged in prison were endur- ing, with time on Robben Island later serving as a badge of honor for political candidates: in both popular culture and scholarship, Robben Island has fre- quently figured as a cradle of democ- racy. As Mandela famously said, with dark humor, “In my country we go to prison first and then become president.” The 1994 collection Voices from Robben Island illuminates the prison experi- ences of Mandela and other men who would lead democratic South Africa. Women were absent from Robben Island, which was reserved for black men. But women were far from absent from the democratic struggle. Women led early fights against “pass laws,” the despised documents that black South Africans were forced to carry to prove that they were employed by white South Africans, or otherwise author- ized to be in cities deemed “white areas.” My class studies photographs of 20,000 women marching on the prime minister’s offices to protest pass laws, in the famous protest on a day in 1956 now commemorated as Women’s Day. We read their eloquent words decrying how apartheid was destroying homes and dividing families. We listen to the “struggle songs” they sang—paying close attention to their lyric, “When Stencil graffiti of Winnie Mandela, Barcelona, Spain (Photo Credit: Guy Moberly/Alamy you strike a woman, you strike a rock.” Stock Photo). November 2018 5 in African nationalist publications as a In the 1960s, everything changed. In contribution to the struggle; to activist April 1960, the government banned the men, a pioneering social worker was a ANC and other liberation movements, catch. Soon after she began work, her after a massive new wave of protests nurse roommate married ANC activist and unprecedented police violence. Oliver Tambo, partner in South Africa’s Leading activists either went into exile, first black-run law firm, Mandela and or went underground: law partners Tambo. In 1957, Winnie began dating Tambo and Mandela exemplified these Nelson. This was not an easy match: strategies, as Tambo moved to London nearly forty years old, Mandela was to lead the ANC’s global campaigns going through both a divorce and a trial and Mandela traveled the country for treason, due to his leadership of the undercover, disguised as a chauffeur ANC’s recent campaigns of non-violent for a white communist comrade. In mass resistance. But the politically- December 1961, the ANC—previously Winnie Mandela in exile in Brandfort, South engaged young Winnie quickly became committed to non-violence—launched Africa, in 1977 (Photo Credit: Pictorial Press engaged to Nelson, and they married the armed wing MK, which began to Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo). soon after his divorce was final, their bomb power plants and government bridal car covered in ANC regalia. buildings. Mandela, a key architect Women were the core of resistance. As the treason trials of Mandela and of MK, again faced trial, and now he They suffered arrests and detention in the Women’s Jail in Johannesburg and Pretoria Central Prison. Leading women activists, like their male counterparts, were “banned,” mean- “The freedom of this country ing that it was illegal for them to speak in public or attend meetings. They was attained by the masses of were confined to house arrest and this country… It was attained exiled—forced to leave the country, or forcibly removed to remote rural by women who were left to areas. Examining women’s activism brings into clearer focus apartheid’s fend for their families… We are violence toward families: as my research explores, women tended to root their the ones who fought the enemy political commitment in their commit- ments as mothers and wives. physically, who went out to face Madikizela-Mandela’s political their bullets.” coming-of-age epitomized how anti-apartheid activism was a family project. She was initially politicized by her family, Mpondo royalty who had other ANC leaders stretched on, was convicted of plotting revolution. fought against colonial expropriation of Madikizela-Mandela became a more In 1964, he went to Robben Island. their family lands long before apartheid. serious acti vist, as journalist Emma He would not be released from prison With the support of her schoolteacher Gilbey described in her 1994 biogra- until 1990.