Winnie Mandela

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela; 26 September 1936 – 2 April 2018), also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the second wife of Nelson Mandela.

She earned a degree in social work in 1956, and decades later earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand.

She held a number of jobs in various parts of what was then the Bantustan of Transkei; including with the Transkei government, living at various points of time at Bizana, Shawbury and Johannesburg.

Her first job was as a social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

Madikizela met lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in 1957, when he was still married to Evelyn Mase.

She was 22 years old and standing at a bus stop in Soweto when Mandela first saw her and charmed her, securing a lunch date the following week.

Born to a Xhosa royal family in Bizana, and a qualified social worker, she married anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in 1958; they remained married for 38 years and had two children together.

The couple married in 1958 and had two daughters, Zenani (born 1958) and Zindziswa (born 1960).

In 1963, after Mandela was imprisoned following the Rivonia Trial, she became his public face during the 27 years he spent in jail.

During that period, she rose to prominence within the domestic anti-apartheid movement.

Madikizela-Mandela was detained by apartheid state security services on various occasions, tortured, subjected to banning orders, and banished to a rural town, and she spent several months in solitary confinement.

Mandela was arrested and jailed in 1963 and was not released until 1990.

In the mid-1980s, Madikizela-Mandela exerted a "reign of terror", and was "at the centre of an orgy of violence" in Soweto, which led to condemnation by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and a rebuke by the ANC in exile.

During this period, her home was burned down by residents of Soweto.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established by Nelson Mandela's government to investigate human rights abuses found Madikizela-Mandela to have been "politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the Mandela United Football Club", her security detail.

Madikizela-Mandela endorsed the necklacing of alleged police informers and apartheid government collaborators, and her security detail carried out kidnapping, torture, and murder, most notoriously the killing of 14-year-old Stompie Sepei whose kidnapping she was convicted of.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990, and the couple separated in 1992; their divorce was finalised in March 1996.

She visited him during his final illness.

As a senior ANC figure, she took part in the post-apartheid ANC government, although she was dismissed from her post amid allegations of corruption.

The couple separated in 1992.

She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003, and from 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996.

A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League.

Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation".

When asked in a 1994 interview about the possibility of reconciliation, she said: "I am not fighting to be the country's First Lady. In fact, I am not the sort of person to carry beautiful flowers and be an ornament to everyone."

They finalised their divorce in March 1996 with an unspecified out-of-court settlement.

During the divorce hearing, Nelson Mandela rejected Madikizela-Mandela's assertion that arbitration could salvage the marriage, and cited her infidelity as a cause of the divorce, saying "... I am determined to get rid of the marriage".

Her attempt to obtain a settlement up to US $5million (R70 million) – half of what she claimed her ex-husband was worth – was dismissed when she failed to appear in court for a settlement hearing.

Madikizela-Mandela was involved in a lawsuit at the time of her death, claiming that she was entitled to Mandela's homestead in Qunu, through customary law, despite her divorce from Nelson Mandela in 1996.

In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of theft and fraud, and she temporarily withdrew from active politics before returning several years later.

Madikizela-Mandela's Xhosa name was Nomzamo.

She was born in the village of Mbhongweni,

Bizana, Pondoland, in what is now the Eastern Cape province.

She was the fifth of nine children, seven sisters and a brother.

Her parents, Columbus and Gertrude, who had a white father and Xhosa mother, were both teachers.

Columbus was a history teacher and a headmaster, and Gertrude was a domestic science teacher.

Madikizela-Mandela went on to become the head girl at her high school in Bizana.

Upon leaving school, she went to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work.

Her case was dismissed by the Mthatha High Court in 2016, and she was reportedly preparing to appeal to the Constitutional Court at the time of her death, after failing at the Supreme Court of Appeal in January 2018.

Winnie Mandela emerged as a leading opponent of apartheid during the latter part of her husband's imprisonment.

Due to her political activities, she was regularly detained by the National Party government.