Winnie Mandela, Controversial Wife Of Nelson Mandela, Dies At 81

Winnie Mandela, the controversial wife of South African human rights icon and president Nelson Mandela, has died, her family said Monday. She was 81.

“She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones,” the family said in a statement.

Mandela had been ill for several years and was hospitalized recently with kidney problems, the South African website Eyewitness News said.

She was married to Nelson Mandela from 1958 until their divorce in 1996. For 27 years of their marriage, he was imprisoned by the minority-white apartheid regime. The couple separated after her husband’s release in 1990 and he became president of South Africa in 1994. He died in 2013.

“She kept the memory of her imprisoned husband Nelson Mandela alive during his years on Robben Island and helped give the struggle for justice in South Africa one its most recognizable faces,” the family said.

“She dedicated most of her adult life to the cause of the people and for this was known far and wide as the Mother Of The Nation,” it said.

Winnie Mandela joined the struggle to end apartheid after working as a hospital social worker in the 1950s. Around the same time she met her future husband, a lawyer and human rights activist. After he was arrested for his political activities, she raised two young daughters alone.

She campaigned for his release and to rally support in South Africa and around the world for the anti-apartheid movement. She was also imprisoned and tortured, and she faced constant security threats.

Her controversial reputation stemmed from harsh comments that appeared to promote violence and were critical of her famous husband, accusations of murder and a conviction for bank fraud.

South African authorities arrested her in 1969 under the Suppression of Terrorism Act, and she spent more than a year in solitary confinement, where she was tortured.

While Nelson Mandela sat in prison, confined to intellectual pursuits and letter writing, Winnie Mandela’s life on the outside put her in the heart of the struggle. Police raids on her home were relentless, as often as four times a day. She was banned from leaving her home at night, and was later restricted from leaving her neighborhood in the Soweto Township of Johannesburg, according to a biography in South Africa History Online.

In 1997, Winnie Mandela’s bodyguard from the 1980s, Jerry Richardson, told South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee that he beat, tortured and killed people whenever she told him to. His boss sometimes participated in the beatings, Richardson said.

In 2003, she was sentenced to four years in prison on dozens of counts of theft and bank fraud. A judge ruled that she profited from loans to poor people who could not get them without a letter from her.