Pay tribute to Winnie Mandela

THE EDITOR: Now all the shouting and the tumult, the political pulling and tugging have died down. The two international icons — Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu, have departed. Will we walk in their footsteps? Can We? But in heaping well deserved encomium on the man whose struggle was a cornerstone on which South African freedom was won and a degree of democracy established, we must not forget the French adage: “Cherchez la femme.”  Truly, behind every successful man there is a woman.

While Nelson Mandela languished in jail for 27 years, it was his wife Winnie who took up the banner and was in the vanguard of the fight for freedom. Her bravery in the face of a vicious and brutal establishment bent on retaining power, is unsurpassed. The stress placed on her shoulder to keep the fires of struggle blazing while Mandela was removed from the scene and jailed in Roben Island, was well-nigh unbearable. But she was a woman with an indomitable will. The fact that she continued to carry on the battle while her husband languished in jail would have given him strength and hope that the cause was not lost. In those early days after his incarceration, Winnie was a source of strength and hope to Nelson Mandela.

Winnie was some 16 years younger than her husband. The physical and emotional pressures on her in continuing the struggle must have been tremendous. She was a beautiful, dynamic young woman revelling in the fray. Men naturally, would have been attracted to her. Any lapse of fidelity in her marital relationship, real or fabricated, in the heat of the struggle, was used by the gaolers in Roben Island to pour their poisonous hate into the ears of the captive Mandela. It was psychological torture in which the gaolers took a sadistic delight. They even took newspaper reports to dangle before his eyes.

They scorched the roots of love in the heart of Nelson Mandela. They succeeded in doing irreversible and permanent damage. That was their intent, to do irreparable damage and divide Nelson and Winnie Mandela, their arch-enemies. Women are endowed by Nature to be more forgiving than men. They can silently bear hurt, especially in marital affairs, and be forgiving. Men cannot. It is a fallacy for men to claim that women are the weaker sex. White racist propaganda, echoed by foreign Western media achieved the dastardly end of severing the bonds of love, friendship and the joint attainment of a common goal — the overthrow of a white racist regime and the introduction of Democracy.

It was a war by Black South Africans for justice and equality. The Whites lost the war but they left an everlasting damage in dividing Nelson and Winnie Mandela. They provided a peg on which the hurt husband could hang the reason for the separation from Winnie — that Winnie was party to the play to kill the spy Stompi. Spies are executed to save lives. The West killed hundreds of thousands of civilians — men, women and children, in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They say they did it to save American lives. The West and Israel kill thousands of innocent people. They brush it all aside as “collateral damage.”

Winnie Mandela contributed no less to the liberation of South Africa from the shackles of a brutal white oppressive, racist regime. The Whites still enjoy most of the wealth while the Blacks continue to live in squalor and poverty. The government of Trinidad and Tobago which so wanted to honour Nelson Mandela should now, on their own steam, invite Winnie Mandela so we can pay tribute to her. Winnie Mandela is a great woman who deserves her place in history. She is no less deserving of honour and acclaim than Nelson Mandela. Let us invite her in recognition of the sacrifice she has made for freedom and the price she has paid.

BALGOBIN   RAMDEEN
Attorney-at-Law
Maraval