Winnie Lashes Out At Nelson Mandela

London, March 09, 2010 - Struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela bitterly lashed out at Nelson Mandela in an interview published in the London Evening Standard this week.

She said South Africa’s first democratically elected president, who is also her ex-husband, had become a “corporate foundation” who was being “wheeled out to collect the money”.

Madikizela-Mandela also called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu a “cretin”, in the interview with Nadira Naipaul, who visited her with her husband, the writer VS Naipaul, in Soweto.

“Mandela let us down,” said Madikizela-Mandela.

“He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside.”

“The economy is very much 'white'. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded,” said Madikizela-Mandela, in the interview published on www.standard.co.uk.

She said Mandela had no control over the ANC anymore and was just being used by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to get funds.

“Look what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has no control or say any more. They put that huge statue of him right in the middle of the most affluent ‘white’ area of Johannesburg. Not here where we spilled our blood and where it all started.”

“Mandela is now a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money and he is content doing that. The ANC have effectively sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of appearance.”

Madikizela-Mandela said Mandela was not the only leader who suffered.

“This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family. You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died.

“Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle, and there were others in the leadership too, like poor Steve Biko, who died of the beatings, horribly all alone.

“Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary. But look what came out.”