Madikizela-Mandela’s detractors continue to oppose her even in her grave

It looks as though struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela will never be able to rest in peace; her detractors continue to oppose her even in her grave.

It boggles the mind that every time a street or landmark is named or renamed after her, a particular group springs up to make the biggest noise. The fierce opposition to renaming William Nicol Drive in Johannesburg after Madikizela-Mandela is unnecessary.

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She was a heroine of the country’s majority. In my observation, those who hated her during apartheid still hate her today. She never enjoyed life as a wife of Nelson Mandela and mother to her children, and she endured hardship as an activist in her own right.

Not only was she frequently jailed and harassed unceasingly by the system, but she also spent a long time under a banishment order in the isolated agricultural town Brandfort (officially renamed Winnie Mandela in 2021) in the Free State.

While she was placed in a lonely small house in the rural town and her husband locked up in a cold jail cell, her children had to be smuggled to Swaziland to get the education they were deprived of. The little girls endured the pain of growing up without a father or a mother.

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When, like every black citizen of this country, she was freed from apartheid oppression, she faced a trial and a jail sentence over the Stompie Seipei saga. Then she got divorced from her iconic husband, affectionately known as “Madiba”.

Even before Madiba was jailed, Madikizela-Mandela could not meet him in the comfort of their home in Soweto but in dark corners. Good friends like Phillip Matthews provided refuge at his humble house, No 8272 in Maseko Street, Orlando West, because Madiba was banned or in hiding, or both were under surveillance by the system.

Apartheid tried – and failed – to strip her of her dignity as she fought against every attempt at humiliating her, surviving even as some women’s league colleagues disowned and denied her. She remained the only woman standing to speak out for the poor in apartheid and in democracy.

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Today, some are still knocking on her tombstone. They seem to say you can name any street after any other leader but Madikizela-Mandela. She is their permanent enemy, as the apartheid doctrine dictated.

An unremorseful Polish immigrant, relying on the principle of “an enemy forever”, ended the life of Chris Hani with a bullet long reserved for that very purpose because apartheid said he was the biggest danger of all freedom fighters, even on the eve of our freedom.

Before that, he was holed up in self-imposed exile in the former Transkei, guarded by Bantu Holomisa’s army.

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It’s difficult to understand the real issue around the Winnie Mandela Drive name-change controversies outside of political grandstanding.

Since 1994, we have had streets, highways, landmarks, structures, municipalities and informal settlements named after Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, Joe Slovo and many others with no resistance to the process.

What is it that bothers some people about Madikizela-Mandela because this is not the first time this has happened?

There was a noise when Cape Town International Airport was proposed to be renamed after her; some even woke up from their slumber to suggest other names never mentioned before.

Freedom obtained without revolution is difficult and problematic because everybody tends to believe they are the victor.

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A negotiated settlement is great for reconciliation and nation-building, but it carries many disadvantages, chief among them the retardation of transformation and democratic progress.