Brutal, unjust treatment ennobles some people and brutalizes others. South African President Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years under the apartheid ancien regime, is an example of the former. His ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, is an example of the latter.
Some three dozen witnesses had testified about Madikizela-Mandela’s brutalities before she had her turn last week before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They told harrowing stories of murders and assorted other episodes of terror committed or inspired by Madikizela–Mandela. She denied everything.
Not only didn’t she do the things that others charged, she said, the whole case against her was trumped up and she was the victim of surveillance and dirty politics by the commission and by the government that her ex-president runs.
Ah, Winnie.
Until Madikizela-Mandela took the stand, the so-called Truth Commission hearings had seemed an amazing example of national soul-cleansing. Week after week, witness after witness, black and white came before the commission, which has no prosecutorial powers, to confess decades of murders, tortures, conspiracies and terror attacks in defense of or in opposition to apartheid. The confessions are necessary, South Africa’s leaders decided, to allow the nation’s divided population to come to terms with its past and face a united future.
But Madikizela-Mandela was having none of that. She had nothing to confess, she said, and her focus was not on the nation’s future but on her own. She accused the commission and the government of trying to derail her political aspirations.
(She is seeking the post of deputy president of the African National Congress in elections to be held later this month. Her candidacy is opposed by leaders of the ANC, including her husband and the organization’s Women’s League.)
Finally, after almost 10 hours of hearings, it took the pleas of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the truth commission chairman, to wring from Madikizela-Mandela the admission that somewhere along the way, as she put it, “Things went horribly wrong.”
Yes, they did. Nelson Mandela, treated brutally, was ennobled. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, treated brutally, became brutish.
