For She's Got Personality Pt 1

FOR SHE’S GOT PERSONALITY

Pt 1

(Especially for people like me who still feel so good about Mrs. Winnie Mandela)

Saluting Nomzamo Zanyiwe Winifred Madikizela Mandela!

♪♪Cause you’ve got personality.

Walk, personality.

Talk, personality.

Smile, personality.

Charm, personality.

                        Love, personality

                        And plus you got a great big heart.

So over and over I’ll be a fool for you

Cause you got personality!♪♪

Personality  by Lloyd Price.

I want to say a word, or rather, a few words for Winnie Mandela. Although they were written in May 1999, in light of the euphoria of the Nelson ‘Mandelamania’ (sic, my coinage) which gripped the world during the December 8-15th celebration of President Nelson Mandela’s passing on December 5^th, 2013, I think this is very timely at this time, February 2014.

Any suggestion that the road taken by the ruling powers to achieve peace and harmony in the restructuring, unifying and democratising of the plural society of South Africa and minimising the inequities therein, might not be a viable one, is liable to meet with hostility from many quarters globally. The popular media, which is fundamentally European, which is white media, has done quite a lot to shape our opinions on this matter.  Consequently, reports about out unflappable African Freedom Fighter Winnie Mandela, who sticks out like a black sore thumb for her resistance to certain policies of post-apartheid South Africa, tend to be strikingly negative. If we commit the error of forgetting the reality of that country, we could fall into the orchestrated trap of dismissing Mrs. Mandela as a mad woman.

Winnie is no more crazy than Hilary Clinton of the U.S.A, Queen Elizabeth of Britain, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta and there is not the slightest question about the sanity of these distinguished women. She may not be regarded as saintly as the famous nun, but neither is Mrs. Clinton nor Queen Elizabeth!

Mrs. Mandela’s position is very interesting to say the least. She is well-known and probably suffers because of her exciting beauty, her sense of fashion, her frankness and fearlessness and her charismatic personality which have in no way been dimmed or eclipsed by her active, chequered and unchecked career in the political arena of her country, or by the innumerable adversities and vicissitudes that beset her. There seems to be a concerted effort from many quarters, not limited to the white race, to gag Winnie and have her totally disgraced into silence. Somehow our Winnie sails on, as eloquent, articulate, fashionable and beautiful as ever in spite of the stormy and inclement political weather and the raging seas which batter her from all sides. Go deh, Winnie, there are many of us who have your back!

This South African woman managed with indomitable fortitude and stamina, to overcome the never-ending assaults of persecution, prosecution and harassment that the agents of apartheid unleashed against her in the hope of destroying her. They persecuted her through her husband, her children, her relatives, her acquaintances her supporters, her jobs and even her places of residence. There is sufficient proof that she was specially targeted to suffer the ignominies and humiliations of apartheid. The dismantling of wicked apartheid has not changed the picture of being targeted for harassment and abasement for Winnie Mandela, but has only changed the forms of punishment and added to that, they come from new and unexpected quarters.

While her husband spent his 27 years imprisoned in the confines of penal institutions, she herself was subjected to another kind of sentence on the outside in the form of unremitting legalised provocation, terrorism and inescapable scrutiny and exposure. She had no real freedom even though she was not confined for all of those 27 years within prison walls. Let us remember that she was incarcerated and subjected to house arrest. Yet she did not buckle under all that stress and pressure from the apartheid regime of terror.

In spite of pain, loss, dislocation, torture, incarceration, house arrests, detentions, unremitting propaganda, scandal, embarrassing revelations, rejection, abandonment, adverse press and constant persecution from several quarters, Winnie has stood her ground, has held and still holds high the banner of African liberation and rehabilitation. She has really and truly suffered on the personal, national and international levels. It is not that her case in suffering so much is unique. Many others suffered similar fate but she, because of her husband’s reputation and her own nature or whatever we choose to call her flamboyant super-confidence which the Afrikaners would find intolerable in a hi-profile black person, she was singled out for attention. Attention from Afrikaner apartheid practitioners does not bode any good for the black one on whom it is focused.

Mrs. Mandela’s courage and confidence in the face of all these personal and national disasters which are laid bare for the world, especially her enemies and detractors to see, to mock and to bring her down a peg or two, seem, in spite of her pain and disillusionment, to have strengthened her and made her more determined to continue the political path to which she has committed herself. She seems determined to retain a devotion to her country and a clarity of vision, undiminished by the euphoria of freedom and liberation mania brought on by the dismantling of apartheid, the ‘one-man-one-vote’ and the incredible novelty of a black president at the helm in partnership with the ex-apartheid chief executive.

If Mrs. Mandela is mad then there are many of us black people in and out of South Africa who are as mad as hatters because she is articulating the true feelings of our reaction to the South African situation. The steadfastness and fearlessness of Winnie Mandela should be an inspiration to some of us faint-hearted African women. I have the greatest respect for this unfortunate sister. She has weaknesses and failings like anyone else. She is not a saint and could not be human and perfect at the same time.

We all make mistakes, some with graver consequences than others. I find it very hard to imagine what crime Mrs. Mandela could have committed that could be considered more atrocious than those of the architects and upholders of apartheid. Yet her sins could not be forgiven her while those of the very people who committed unspeakable crimes against humanity, and specifically against South African black people, including Mrs. Mandela, can be so easily forgiven.

Lord God Almighty, have mercy on us black people, one and all! Sons & Daughters of Africa, it is possible that you yourselves are asking yourselves the very same questions. Lots and lots of people are at a loss to understand this judgement. Don’t expect me to supply you with the answer. I, too, am at a loss.

If we sons and daughters of Ham have to judge Winnie, let it be for her faith, her courage, her commitment and her active and constructive participation in the affairs of her distorted country. Let us judge her for the way in which she unfailingly held the fort for her husband and the manner in which she carried out her commissions as Nelson told us in Higher Than Hope. Let us judge her as a warrior caught up in a war where certain decisions were taken in the spirit of the cruel hazards of war. Let us judge her as one of the most stalwart female freedom fighters for her black people. Let us judge her for all those years that she, a single black parent, wife of the most famous prisoner in the world unflinchingly carried the baton for her husband and the banner in the struggle against the evil forces of apartheid. In spite of what may transpire on the South African scene to put this our African stalwart in a negative light, Nomzamo Zanyiwe Winifred Madikizela Mandela has certainly paid her dues.
To be continued

All the images were taken from the Internet and I claim no copyright.