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Nomzamo: Teaching Complexity

through the Life of

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Meghan Healy-Clancy

hen Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed
away in early April 2018, I was teaching
Wmy seminar on Apartheid and the Anti-
Apartheid Movement. I have been studying apartheid
for well over a decade, but I am always surprised by the

excitement and challenge of teaching about it. Before Winnie Mandela (Photo in Public Domain).
my class, students have rarely learned much about the only through the lives of “great men,”
racist regime that ruled South Africa from 1948 to but also through the lives of women?

1994, or about the global human rights movement How does change look different when
viewed “from above”—from the van-
that tenaciously fought to transform South Africa into tage point of high politics—and “from
an inclusive democracy. But students often come into below”—through people’s everyday
my class convinced of one thing: apartheid ended experiences? Ultimately, what are
the personal costs of participating in a
primarily because of the heroic actions of one man, world-historic revolution?
Nelson Mandela. No one challenged the great man nar-
rative of South African history centered
I aim for students to leave my class unheralded South Africans, who reveal on Nelson Mandela more than his
grasping the complexity of anti-apart- that apartheid ended through decades former wife. “Mandela was extricated
heid activism—both in and far beyond of struggle, shaped by many forms of from the masses,” Madikizela-Mandela
the campaigns to which Mandela was both heroism and villainy. This April, told London Review of Books journalist
central. The anti-apartheid movement we talked more than ever about the late Stephen Smith in 2013, in an interview
drew upon Christianity and commu- Madikizela-Mandela. featured in Smith’s “Mandela: Death of
nism; it enlisted families in boycott For no one emblematized the complex- a Politician” (2014). “He was made an
campaigns and militants in bombing ity of anti-apartheid activism more than idol, almost Jesus Christ! This is non-
campaigns. It rallied ordinary peo- the woman known before her mar- sense, a lot of nonsense. The freedom of
ple—especially young people—from riage as Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe this country was attained by the masses
Soweto to university campuses in Madikizela: her isiXhosa first name of this country… It was attained by
Massachusetts; it eventually captured can aptly be interpreted as “mother of women who were left to fend for their
the moral imagination of the world. struggle.” It is not only that she embod- families… We are the ones who fought
And it culminated in a democratic ied the difficulties of commitment to the enemy physically, who went out
transition that no one expected: a the anti-apartheid movement, which to face their bullets. The leaders were
transition at once remarkably peace- South Africans call “The Struggle,” cushioned behind bars. They don’t
ful in Pretoria’s corridors of power, and served as “mother of the nation.” It know. They never engaged the enemy
and filled with enduring violence is also that seeing the liberation move- on the battlefield.”
and tension in communities across ment through her perspective is itself
South Africa. I teach this complex- a struggle, causing students to grapple Students initially tend to find her
ity by bringing an array of voices to with core questions of social history critique shocking. Her claim that
class, through primary sources rang- that transcend South Africa. How do “leaders were cushioned” on Robben
ing from manifestos to songs. My we understand political transformations Island, the prison off the coast of Cape
students encounter many famous and Town where Mandela spent most of his
differently when we examine them not

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