South Africa will ‘stop and reflect’ for funeral of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Posted Apr 9, 2018

[Anglican Communion News Service] The funeral of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, which will be held at Soweto’s Orlando Stadium April 14, will cause South Africa to “stop and reflect,” the archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, said. Speaking to the Anglican Communion News Service, Thabo said: “the nation – like we did with Albertina Sisulu – will stop and reflect on the democratic values that Winnie Mandela and the people she worked with stood for. The nation will cry, the nation will reflect deeply, and the nation will say ‘how do we move forward?’ in terms of who we are, particularly around the issues of the value of one-another, the respect for one-another, and inter-racial harmony and equality.”

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Comments (2)

  1. Tony Oberdorfer says:
    April 9, 2018 at 2:20 pm

    That the Archbishop of Cape Town can with a straight face talk about Winnie Mandela’s “democratic values” merely shows how far the Anglican Church in South Africa has sunk. All the lovely verbiage cannot hide the truth that she and her sometime husband Nelson took pleasure in killing people who did not share their views, blacks as well as whites, in the most brutal ways possible of which “necklacing” was probably the worst example. These are facts which can easily be ascertained. It speaks ill of the Episcopal News Service that it evidently finds it impossible to come up with informed Anglicans in South Africa or elsewhere who could confirm that the most evil acts of the apartheid regime do not match those of some of its opponents and that would certainly include the beloved Winnie.

    1. mfschjonberg says:
      April 10, 2018 at 11:41 am

      The ACNS story quotes the archbishop as saying “There are mistakes that she made because life threw a lot of curve-balls towards her. But she handled some of those with dignity, but some she really hopelessly failed. But we need to remember the good that Winnie did, as a Methodist Christian, as a courageous woman, as a beautiful woman. And we need to say ‘what can we learn from who Winnie is?’”

      That call to reflection makes sense to me. The story of Winnie and Nelson Mandela’s role in the struggle to end apartheid is hardly simple and it is hardly possible to assign anyone in it to the categories of True Saint or Heinous Sinner. We also have to consider how quick some of us are to criticize black South Africans who failed to accomplish their goals through non-violent means while we erect statutes to white people such as Cecil Rhodes and Lord Nelson, and swooning over movie depictions of heroes such as Churchill who helped win World War II and championed the tactics that resulted in the slaughter we know as Gallipoli.

      Why is it so hard for us to accept the call to reflect on the enigmatic and the morally ambiguous, and learn from the struggle?

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