ANC seeks Winnie to 'verify' Mandela remarks
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Mar 09 2010 14:06
The ANC was trying to contact Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to find out if
she really had said Nelson Mandela had let down black people, an
official said on Tuesday.
"She is in the US now and we are in the process of trying to locate
her," said African National Congress spokesperson Ishmael Mnisi.
"We want to ask her if these comments were made by her; if this is
exactly what she said."
Mnisi denied a report that Madikizela-Mandela would be called to explain
herself at the party's national executive committee meeting next week.
Party keen to 'verify' remarks
"That is not correct. What we said is that we would wait for her to
verify if these reports are truly attributed to her," said Mnisi.
The struggle stalwart apparently lashed out at her ex-husband in an
interview published in the London Evening Standard this week.
She said Mandela 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," Madikizela-Mandela, was quoted as saying in the interview
published on the Mail Online.
She said Mandela had no control over the ANC anymore and was being used
by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to raise 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 had
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.
'Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart?'
"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 also criticised her former husband in the interview
for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with former president FW de Klerk.
"I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel [Peace Prize in
1993] with his jailer 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 chairperson.
"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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