According to multiple reports, anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died on Monday at age 81. She was better known as the ex-wife of the late South African political leader, Nelson Mandela. However, she also had a strong following of her own and many are still saddened by Winnie’s death.
Many are now looking for Winnie Mandela’s quotes as a way to remember her and the extraordinary life she lived before she died. She authored several books and was a devoted wife to her late ex-husband before his death.
Winnie Mandela’s Death
Winnie was married to Nelson for 38 years, which included the 27 years he was in prison on Robben Island near Cape Town. According to reports, Winnie died peacefully after a long illness and was in and out of the hospital before she passed.
“It is with profound sadness that we inform the public that Mrs. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed away at the Netcare Milpark Hospital‚ Johannesburg‚ South Africa on Monday April 2‚ 2018,” her family said in a statement.
Winnie was known for supporting her husband while he was imprisoned, but they divorced two years after he became South Africa’s first black president. According to CNN, they divorced in 1996 but had two daughters together.
Winnie Mandela’s Quotes
- “The years of imprisonment hardened me…. Perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions wouldn’t be blunted as they have been in my case. When it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life, I no longer have the emotion of fear, there is no longer anything I can fear. There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn’t any pain I haven’t known.”
- “I would be picked up after work. Nelson, a fitness fanatic, was there in the car in gym attire. I was taken to the gym, to watch him sweat! That became the pattern of my life. One moment, I was watching him. Then he would dash off to meetings, with just time to drop me off at the hostel. Even at that stage, life with him was a life without him.”
- “I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.”
- “That is part of one’s life one does not even want to remember… I could only visit him once in six months. We had to keep [a] link through letters and through visits when they were increased. At the end of [the prisoners’] stay on Robben Island, we could visit them two times a month. And it would be a visit of two people at a given time. That helped a lot to keep the family ties and to sort of keep that link between him and the children. Before that, all they did was read about their father.”
- “I had so little time to love him. And that love has survived all these years of separation … perhaps if I’d had time to know him better I might have found a lot of faults, but I only had time to love him and long for him all the time.”
- “Together, hand in hand, with our matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.”
The story is still developing and funeral arrangements haven’t been revealed at this moment. The family will release memorial details once they have been finalized.
