Winnie says Mandela let us down
09 March 2010
________________________________
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Mandela is now a corporate foundation
Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a
burning young revolutionary. But look what came out
Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and see
where it all went
Struggle stalwart Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela bitterly lashed out at Nelson Mandela in an interview
published in the London Evening Standard this week. She said South
Africa’s first democratically elected
president, who is also her ex-husband, had become a "corporate
foundation" who was being "wheeled out to collect the money".
Madikizela-Mandela also called Archbishop Emeritus
Desmond Tutu a "cretin", in the interview with Nadira Naipaul, who
visited her with her husband, the writer VS Naipaul, in Soweto. "Mandela let
us down," said Madikizela-Mandela. "He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks.
Economically,
we are still on the outside. "The economy is very much ’white’. It has a few
token
blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded,"
said Madikizela-Mandela, in the interview
published on www.standard.co.uk. She said Mandela had no control over the
ANC anymore
and was just being used by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to get funds. "Look
what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has
no control or say any more. They put that huge statue of him right in
the middle of the most affluent ’white’ area of Johannesburg. Not here
where we spilled our blood and where it all started. "Mandela is now a
corporate foundation. He is wheeled
out globally to collect the money and he is content doing that. The ANC
have effectively sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake
of appearance." Madikizela-Mandela said Mandela was not the only leader who
suffered. "This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of
my family. You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who
suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and
died. "Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle, and
there were others in the leadership too, like poor Steve Biko, who died
of the beatings, horribly all alone.
"Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young
revolutionary. But look what came
out." Madikizela-Mandela criticised him for accepting the
Nobel Peace Prize with the apartheid government’s last president, FW de
Klerk. "I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel
[Peace Prize in 1993] with his jailer [FW] de Klerk. Hand in hand they went.
"Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness
of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed,
and our struggle was not a flash in the pan, it was bloody to say the
least and we had given rivers of blood. "I had kept it alive with every
means at my disposal." She also lashed out at the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission process, criticising Tutu, its chairman. "Look at this Truth and
Reconciliation charade. He
[Mandela] should never have agreed to it. "What good does the truth do? How
does it help anyone
to know where and how their loved ones were killed or buried? That
Bishop Tutu who turned it all into a religious circus came here. "He had the
cheek to tell me to appear. I told him a
few home truths. I told him that he and his other like-minded cretins
were only sitting here because of our struggle and me. Because of the
things I and people like me had done to get freedom." Looking back, she said
the movement’s actions were
badly planned. "You know, sometimes I think we had not thought it all
out. There was no planning from our side. How could we? We were badly
educated and the leadership does not acknowledge that. Maybe we have to
go back to the drawing board and see where it all went wrong." - Sapa
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