Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

There was nothing of the Siddhartha about her.  Modest and sombre middle ways are not the stuff of revolutionary ardour.  Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s mark on history was always going to render the violent normal, the blood stain a perceived, even psychopathic necessity.  If society itself was prone to sanguinary realisations, she would oblige and flourish within its confines.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Youth Day, as it is known in South Africa, is a national holiday commemorating the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising against the white-minority apartheid government. Arriving almost an hour late to the rally at a soccer stadium in the all-black township, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela approached her ex-husband’s successor, President Thabo Mbeki as he sat with other government officials on a dais, and leaned in to kiss his cheek.