The Ohio University African Students Union will host a memorial service in remembrance of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on Friday, April 6, from 6 to 7 p.m. in Alden Library 319. The memorial is free and open to the public.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was one of the women freedom fighters during apartheid South Africa. She is regarded as an icon and during her lifetime she was affectionately called Mother of the Nation. While many people across the world remember the name Nelson Mandela, it is also very important to always emphasize the fact Winnie was a very significant part of the struggle that kept the memory of the late Nelson Mandela alive in the frontlines when he was incarcerated for over two decades. Clearly, by assuming a very active role in the liberation struggle at the time, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had become a revolutionary activist in her own right. We believe that this aspect of her life, most of which she had dedicated to see more active roles in leadership, has transformed her into an independent visionary female leader whose contribution to the political transformation in South Africa far surpassed the expected roles of women in a patriarchal society. For example, Madikizela-Mandela achieved all these despite her being a single mother caring for her two girls, the wife of a political prisoner and, being dragged to jail on numerous occasions herself.
Therefore, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s contribution to the struggle against apartheid cannot go unnoticed, as it happened during and after the apartheid period. Her death comes at the time of tumultuous political developments in South Africa, when there is a growing discontent among the majority of South Africans, most of whom are the victims of economic and social marginalization by the apartheid era, to the effect that the new democratic environment has not succeeded in flipping their engineered fate. In particular, South Africans feel that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has failed to live up to the promises of its own set of freedom principles adopted on June 26, 1955 under the “Freedom Charter” banner. This has resulted in the birth of a new political force, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the subsequent calls for the restoration, without compensation, of properties seized using the unjust legal and military apparatus of apartheid regime, at the center of which is the land question. As a true revolutionary Madikizela-Mandela un-ashamedly put her weight behind this long overdue push for justice after freedom, an action which didn’t come without consequences. Furthermore, Winnie has openly expressed her disappointment towards the current ANC’s attitude towards the struggle, and she was one of the few courageous who publicly proclaimed that South Africa was under state capture.
In 2014, Ohio University Press published a book titled "491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69" which chronicles an autobiography of her experience, situation and resistance sensibilities as a black woman who was a freedom fighter. This book is a compilation of a prison journal which Winnie kept a secret in the wake of the struggle.
ASU wishes to extend an invitation to this memorial which will be held in honor of this global icon. As part of the memorial, there will be a brief video screening of Madikizela’s life, a discussion forum and Keith Phetlhe will recite a poem titled Memory Rekindled which is dedicated to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
"Memory Rekindled" By Keith Phetlhe
Like clay we crack under day
we break like hay
when we are left in forlorn,
just when we were still suckling, as sons and daughters
our eyes closed till the current of the charisma
gets swallowed by the belly of death.
In melancholy, raped by sadness we weep
struggling to comfort our black bodies
that keep enduring the plight of white gaze.
Like a rhinoceros that spotted a spark of fire
in the thickening of the bush,
the motherly icon has crept and ambushed
the fire that dared to burn shrubs of the African savanna,
her might is written in the open surface of an ivory pillar
from a rhino who hurried to ambush the fire
and infuriated those who set the fire to spread and burn the African shrub.
A tree had sprouted. Like wisdom coming from age.
A tree has withered. But we still pick its plumage and seeds.
and sit under the tree’s canopy-in memoriam.
Resilient and resisting. Owing our being to a rare sun hymn.
A pebble, a cowry sitting by the river.
Our throats cannot carry the weight of a freedom song,
except for its chorus, an appealing exodus
when we end the day with a political ritual.
This article is a statement from the Ohio University African Students Union about the passing of freedom fighter and revolutionary Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.