General: Media ‘distorts’ Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy – Minister

Attempts by ‘a local broadcaster and some international news agencies’ to ‘cast aspersions on the revolutionary character of (the late) Mama Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’ were described yesterday in a Department of Communications media statement as ‘a mischievous distortion … devoid of truth and a clear example of … lack (of) journalistic research amongst the media establishment’, reports Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch.  While the statement fell short of naming the broadcaster and agencies concerned, in the view of Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane they relied on ‘an apartheid-era narrative’ among other things portraying Madikizela-Mandela’s ‘legacy’ as ‘compromised and divisive’. ‘Media houses ought to report (on such matters) with the requisite sensitivity, historical facts and respect for the family.’

A recent Reuters article on Madikizela-Mandela’s life as a ‘an anti-apartheid heroine’ nevertheless also described her role during the late 1980s as that of ‘a ruthless ideologue prepared to sacrifice laws and lives in pursuit of revolution and redress’. Referring to ‘the brutality of her Soweto enforcers the Mandela United Football Club’ and ‘the killing of activist Stompie Seipei’, its author Ed Cropley alluded to a ‘string of legal and political troubles that, accompanied by tales of her glamorous living, kept … (Madikizela-Mandela) in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons’. According to Cropley, during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) she ‘grudgingly’ admitted that ‘things’ had gone ‘horribly wrong’.

In November 1997, then Department of Safety and Security official and former United Democratic Front (UDF) treasurer Azhar Cachalia told a TRC hearing into ‘alleged atrocities’ committed by Madikizela-Mandela and members of her football club that the UDF’s decision in 1989 to ‘publicly distance’ itself from ‘Mrs Mandela’s actions’ was one of its ‘proudest moments’ (Sapa). The TRC eventually ruled that Madikizela-Mandela had been ‘politically and morally accountable’ for ‘gross violations of human rights’ at the hands of football club members. Making no reference to that unfortunate phase of Madikizela-Mandela’s life, the Department of Communications statement instead focused on the ‘grossly gendered’ tone of the media coverage.

Allegedly errant journalists were accused of seeking to ‘cast aside’ Madikizela-Mandela’s status as a ‘freedom fighter first and foremost’ – focusing instead on her role as ‘merely a wife to our leader Nelson Mandela’. According to Minister Nomvula Mokonyanye, she was ‘her own person’. ‘The notion of boxing her as former President Mandela’s ex-wife’ was ‘deliberately intended’ to undermine ‘the woman’ herself. In his Reuters article, Cropley acknowledged that, throughout her husband’s long prison term, Madikizela-Mandela ‘campaigned tirelessly’ for his release and ‘the rights of black South Africans’ – ‘suffering years of detention, banishment and arrest’.