was really a facade that we were totally free.
We are not.”
Among young South Africans, who had
grown up in an increasingly unequal society,
statements like that held deep resonance.
At Wits University in Johannesburg, stu-
dent protesters waved signs proclaiming
themselves “Children of Winnie,” and at
Stellenbosch University near Cape Town,
activists renamed the campus administra-
tion building “Winnie Mandela House.”
For those students and many others,
Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela-
Mandela, who died April 2 in Johannesburg,
embodied both the rage of being a black
South African under apartheid and the bit-
ing disappointment, for many, of being a
black South African after it.
Unlike Nelson Mandela, from whom she
was divorced in 1996, Madikizela-Mandela
remained publicly bitter about South Af-
rica’s dark history and the shadow it cast
over the country’s present. Meanwhile, she
openly and repeatedly refused the roles that
same history tried to cast her in – as the
mother of a nation, as the moral compass
of a liberation struggle, and, finally, as an
aging hero quietly fading into the past.
“She was independent. She spoke her
mind. She wasn’t scared of anything or
anyone,” says Sithembile Mbete, a politi-
cal scientist at the University of Pretoria.
“In a South Africa where black women are
the lowest rung on the hierarchy, she defied
white supremacy and white patriarchy, but
also black patriarchy, too.”
Mr. Mandela’s shadow she was not. She
was already an activist when, in 1957, she
met a young lawyer with kind eyes and fi-
ery politics at a bus stop. Their whirlwind
romance was built on a shared passion
for revolution. But in 1964, Mandela was
sentenced to life in jail for conspiring to
overthrow the apartheid government, leav-
ing Madikizela-Mandela alone to carry on
their fight.Mandela faded into an anti-apartheid
symbol. “Ma Winnie” was its living embod-
iment. She was broadcast again and again
into the world’s living rooms, giving impas-
sioned speeches and tussling with police.
In May 1969, she was dragged from
the home she shared with her two young
daughters and spent 491 days in solitary
confinement. That was “what changed me,
what brutalized me so much that I knew
what it is to hate,” she wrote in a memoir.
Later, she spent nearly a decade confined
in a distant rural township.
When she returned to Johannesburg in
1985, her frustration was palpable. Three
years later, a group of violent vigilantes
who served as her informal bodyguards
murdered a 14-year-old activist named
Stompie Moeketsi, who they claimed was
an informer. She denied responsibility, but
was convicted of kidnapping. Her sentence
was later reduced to a fine.
When her husband finally emerged from
prison in 1990, they clasped hands as they
marched, fists raised. But the chasm be-
tween the lives they had led over the pre-
ceding 27 years quickly became evident.
As he preached the need for reconcilia-
tion and dialogue, she told a US talk show
host she was ready to “go back to the bush
and take up arms” if government talks
soured. The two split two years later.- Ryan Lenora Brown / Staff writer
‘SHE WASN’T SCARED OF ANYTHING
OR ANYONE.’- Sithembile Mbete, University of Pretoria
With two nuclear-proliferation standoffs
looming with North Korea and Iran, a reality
check is timely. Career policy experts – the
often unheralded men and women who
practice old-fashioned, nuts-and-bolts
diplomacy, whether in the State Depart-
ment or Defense Department, the National
Security Council or the CIA – have been
denigrated of late by some of President
Trump’s most vocal cheerleaders, referred
to as “deep state,” and depicted as somehow
plotting to frustrate Mr. Trump.
Many policy experts spend years study-
ing the countries in which they specialize.
They rely on a core assumption: that every
major decision by the United States or other
countries is likely to cause counteractions
and carry consequences.
That explains why many are worried
about the next two months. They agreewith Trump’s policy aim: to rein in the
dangers posed by an oppressive, aggressive
dictatorship in Pyongyang and by an in-
creasingly well-armed, expansionist regime
in Tehran. What unsettles them is the lack of
attention they feel is being paid to potential
implications and complications.
If all goes according to plan, Trump will
soon become the first US president to meet
with a North Korean leader. Trump seems
confident that his success in tightening
international sanctions and his hints at
US military action, along with his own
negotiating experience as a businessman,
will deliver a summit deal leading to North
Korea’s nuclear disarmament.
That would be a truly historic accom-
plishment. The concern among the policy
experts is that there has been so little of the
kind of diplomatic spadework that has ledto past breakthroughs on similarly complex
issues, for instance, President Richard
Nixon’s 1972 opening to China. Only two
leaders will be at the upcoming summit. But
the interests and influence of South Korea,
Japan, and China must also be considered.
The concerns over Iran involve ripples
and repercussions of a different sort. Trump
has indicated that the 2015 agreement to
put Iran’s nuclear program on hold will have
to be hugely strengthened by May 12 or
the US will pull out. Yet Russia and China
are signatories. So are Britain, Germany, and
France – and the European Union. They’ve
all signaled opposition to withdrawing.
Add to that this concern: Is US credibility
in negotiating denuclearization with Kim
Jong-un hurt by the threats to undo the Iran
deal?- Ned Temko / Correspondent
Why Trump’s nuclear negotiations raise concerns
DC DECODER uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS/FILELEADER: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (r.) arrives
at a conference for South Africa’s ruling African
National Congress in Johannesburg, Dec. 16, 2017.