Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s fractious relationship with the ANC has come under the spotlight since her death, as ANC leaders continue to pay fulsome tribute.
Among the outpouring was an irate statement from the EFF describing her as the "brick the builders rejected". The comment harks back to the difficulties she faced with the ANC, from her axing as a deputy minister to her treatment at the party’s 1997 conference, where former president Jacob Zuma was elected ANC deputy president.
Madikizela-Mandela was meant to contest the post, and her ardent loyalists argue that the decade of misrule under Zuma might have been averted had she stood and won.
EFF leader Julius Malema said this week Madikizela-Mandela was deprived of the chance of becoming the party’s first female president, in a conspiracy to keep her out of power. Zuma, he said, "stole" the deputy position.
Former president Thabo Mbeki weighed in during an interview with eNCA on Tuesday, saying Madikizela-Mandela was not elected because she was not as popular as Zuma at the time. He added that she entered the race too late and would have required a nomination from the conference floor, which in the end did not happen.
Writing in The Republic Mail in 2017, Business Day columnist Khaya Sithole said the bid to avert Madikizela-Mandela’s ascent was orchestrated by Mbeki and then ANC deputy secretary-general Cheryl Carolus. "It was carefully planned, viciously executed and dramatically staged. In the planning, there was a need to isolate Winnie from the party and her core supporters," he wrote. Long before the conference, ANC branches were advised against nominating Madikizela-Mandela. "Having won a landslide in the Women’s League elections, it was inconceivable that Winnie would fail to get a nomination from the branches — and yet it happened."
The pair also moved to change the rules for nomination, increasing the required threshold from 10% to 25%.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings added to Madikizela-Mandela’s isolation and humiliation. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga says her sidelining was motivated by her particular brand of politics. There was an orchestrated effort to neutralise both Madikizela-Mandela and then ANC Youth League leader Peter Mokaba.
Their politics represented a more "radical posture" than the "market-orientated" line that came to dominate ANC politics under Mbeki. It also marked a battle between the exiles and "inziles" — those who fought apartheid from inside the country, he says.
Ironically, Mathekga says, President Cyril Ramaphosa was on Madikizela-Mandela’s side at the time. By the time Mbeki knocked her hat off at a rally in 2001, in full view of TV cameras, her isolation was almost complete.
She remained in the party structures and continued to give counsel where she could. In a hard-hitting interview with The Star newspaper ahead of the ANC’s 2007 Polokwane conference, she warned the battle between Zuma and Mbeki would tear the party apart. Behind the scenes, she approached both leaders in an attempt to avoid the clash, to no avail.
When the ANC moved to expel Malema, Madikizela-Mandela testified on his behalf. She urged the party not to expel the youth leaguers, using former president Nelson Mandela’s time in the league as an example of how seemingly "ungovernable" youth could become leaders.
But Malema was axed.
ANC veteran Mac Maharaj says Madikizela-Mandela was isolated even before the democratic period by the apartheid system, which robbed the party of the opportunity to "keep her within the embrace of a collective". She was unable to benefit from the ANC’s strength and wisdom and by the time it was legalised she was uncomfortable within the confines of that collective.
Mathekga says she saw herself in Malema — discarded by the movement they both loved. In recent years she was critical of the Zuma leadership, saying it had lost its way. But in the last months of her life she was more optimistic about the party’s trajectory under Ramaphosa.
Madikizela-Mandela’s relationship with the ANC had almost come full circle by the time of her death. Malema conceded in December that to ask her to leave the ANC to join the EFF would be insulting. "If she leaves the ANC and dies tomorrow we will not be burying a real person. She must be buried with the flag she carried throughout her life," he said.
Flags aside, the best tribute to Madikizela-Mandela would be for the ANC to heed her calls for rehabilitation.
• Marrian is political editor.
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