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The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela
Few historical figures had a greater impact upon my politics than Winnie Mandela. While as a student loosely involved in the student divestment movement and the call for sanctions against South Africa by the U.S., Nelson Mandela might have been the person we demanded to be released but Winnie Mandela was in the public eye. I watched more than one documentary and listened to dozens of programs about her activism in South Africa under the worst of circumstances in that country during the 1980’s. It was regular viewing in my home and it then pushed me to read more on the struggle. The struggle against apartheid for me personally became the immediate issue. As the civil rights generations sought to unravel Jim Crow, my generation wanted Nelson Mandela and all the other political prisoners freed and we wanted apartheid to end. Winnie Mandela, who was out each day struggling for it thousands of miles away, was the living embodiment of this ideal.
With the release of another book on her life, The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela, by Sisonke Msimang, it is, to me, a chance to re-visit this remarkable woman and human being. Her struggle is laid bare here in 144 succinct pages. It is a tightly woven account that reads like a letter from Msimang to Winnie Mandela (Mandela died in 2018), that is full of love, appreciation, criticism, but which also seeks to make her story be understood better…
