City Confers the Freedom of the City to Mam’ Winnie Madikizela-Mandela 

25 September 2018

Speaker, Cllr Vasco da Gama,

Our special guests, Zenani and Zindzi Mandela as well as members of the Madikizela and Mandela families,

Close friends and comrades of our honouree,

Chief Whip of Council, Cllr Kevin Wax,

Members of the Mayoral Committee,

Leaders of all Political Parties,

Fellow Councillors,

Veterans and Stalwarts of various organisations present today,

City Manager, Dr Ndivhoniswani Lukhwareni,

Managers and Officials of Council,

Distinguished guests,

The media,

Fellow Citizens,

Mr Speaker, I am sure I speak for everyone gathered in these chambers today when I say it is indeed a great honour to be part of an occasion in which the City of Johannesburg confers the status of Freedom of the City on one of our most illustrious citizens, Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

This honour is long overdue.

To Zenani and Zindzi, it is indeed shameful that we had to wait until the passing of Mam’uWinnie to recognise her for her contribution to this country’s freedom.

You, more than most, know that, after all she had been through in her life, this was the least we could do to honour her memory and extend our gratitude for her many sacrifices.

But for reasons now known to us, she has gained notoriety and stands as a figure of controversy rather than a symbol of resistance, defiance and hope to so many.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Few names evoke a rush of mixed emotions and reactions like that of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

But take a look at how Madikizela-Mandela was, and still is, portrayed in the mainstream media as well as by some analysts and commentators and you will realise that the authors of history did quite a number on her.

From humble beginnings in the Eastern Cape, Madikizela-Mandela would rise to assume prime position in the latter, more tumultuous stages of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle.

Although checkered, her life was that of an individual who was largely shaped by the harsh reality she was forced to endure - all by her lonesome.

Winnie was a woman of her time.

There is no doubt that many had all but forgotten, and were largely unappreciative of, the role Winnie Madikizela-Mandela played in shaping our history.

In the 1960s and much of the 1970s, when the ANC and other liberation movements were banned and forced underground, it was Winnie who kept the flame of liberation burning.

When South Africa’s memories of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others were beginning to fade, it was Winnie who refreshed our collective memories, putting her then incarcerated husband top of mind.

When the Nationalist Party government thought they had relegated the memory of Nelson Mandela to the dustbin of history, Winnie revived it.

In one of her many memorable quotes, Winnie put paid to the government’s belief that it could make the black majority forget about Mandela when she said, and I quote: “They think because they have put my husband on an island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become”.

With these words, she launched herself onto the national stage and became the unstoppable force we know today.

When the apartheid security machinery was at its most supreme, crushing every sign of resistance, and hope for freedom was fading faster by the day, it was Winnie who, through her defiance, taught us to persevere.

And so she continued, alone and defiant through to the 1980s when, faced with the reality that their grip on power was loosening by the day, apartheid war-mongers turned to their most brutal instincts.

Despite these threats, she remained defiant and continued to speak truth to power.

But Winnie’s many sacrifices and contributions have been reduced to nothing more than a footnote in the pages of the history of men.

We see this in the manner in which she was often referred; largely as Nelson Mandela’s wife. Nothing more.

Those who did this seemed to forget that she was her own person; a woman of firsts - the first black social worker in South Africa.

A caregiver of note whose earlier contributions as a social worker are all but forgotten.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s belief in the centrality of individual freedom alongside the need for social and economic freedom, as the best means for creating a free society, should resonate with all of us.

Through her numerous acts of defiance, she sought not only to protest against all the evil policies that were implemented by the apartheid government but also protested against the apartheid government itself.

Her’s was a protest for freedom and equal franchise within her own country.

Her’s was also a protest for the right to quality basic services; the right to access to proper schooling and healthcare; the right to have access to economic opportunities; and the right to pursue a life lived with complete dignity.

But she was met with intimidation, brutality, torture and isolation - even from her young daughters.

While this was not the most stable environment, it certainly gave her a sense of personal independence and saw her undergo a transformation from a young, perhaps naïve mother raising two little girls to a battle-scarred activist with absolutely no fear of the brutal apartheid government.

Who can forget when she emerged from her one of her many stints in detention, only to declare: “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.”

It was this sense of independence and her desire to live in true freedom that drove Winnie to persevere against all odds, and drove her to continue to be a compelling figure in the story of post-apartheid South Africa.

In those dark days of apartheid when the government of the day did everything in its power to prevent a black person from succeeding, Winnie was steadfast in the belief that a minority could not determine the destiny of the majority black people of South Africa.

At a time of racial and tribal tensions, Winnie spoke of black unity.

I could borrow from her words but, seeing as we here to honour her, it would be best to allow her to speak for herself.

In her own words, she instructed as follows, and I quote: “It is only when all black groups join hands and speak with one voice that we shall be a bargaining force which will decide its own destiny.”

She would go on to emphasise this point, declaring and again I quote: “If you are to free yourselves you must break the chains of oppression yourselves. Only then can we express our dignity, only when we have liberated ourselves can we co-operate with other groups. Any acceptance of humiliation, indignity or insult is acceptance of inferiority.”

How I wish we could heed Winnie’s words, especially at this moment in our nation’s history when our daily troubles seem to force us to turn on each other when we should be more united than ever by our common goals.

I fear that, as we continue to see each other as enemies or competitors for the scant resources available, we will be distracted from the bigger objective of the sort of true liberation Winnie longed for - that of political and most importantly, economic liberation.

Despite the many obstacles, Winnie’s fight, her struggle, would ultimately lead South Africa to the country’s first democratic elections in April of 1994.

Sadly, despite our advance into democracy, and peaceful government, aspects of pre-1994 South Africa continue to linger.

Her dream of a democratic South Africa, and all which it signified, remains to this day a dream deferred for many of our people - particularly for millions of our youth – who struggle against poverty and poor access to even the most basic of public services.

For me at the very least, it is clear that despite South Africa’s democratic dispensation, far too many of our people continue live under the same harsh socio-economic realities that so many of us lived under while growing up.

Speaking with a sense of betrayal - before the passing of Madiba - Winnie lamented the gross levels of corruption.

She pointed out that this was not what she and many other heroes and heroines had fought for.

The sharp pain she must have felt at the state of South Africa was unmissable when she noted, and I quote: “All what we fought for is not what is going on right now. It is a tragedy that he lived and saw what was happening, we cannot pretend like South Africa is not in crisis, our country is in crisis and anyone who cannot see that is just bluffing themselves.”

Present day South Africa obviously does not represent the dream that Winnie fought for nor is it the dream so many forgotten heroines worked so hard to realise.

Today, almost 900 000 people in the City of Johannesburg are unemployed.

In other words, 1 in 3 people residing in the City of Johannesburg are denied the means to earn a living and struggle on a daily basis to take care of themselves and their families.

Young people are even harder hit by the lack of opportunities in our City, with 40% of young people unable to find work.

Nationally, more than 9 million people are without work. This includes a large group that has given up looking for work.

This is a matter that will require us to put our party political affiliations aside, forget our political ideologies and combine our heads to find solutions to the ticking time-bomb that is youth unemployment.

We must agree that our public education system is broken and must be rebuilt in order to give our children a glimmer of hope that they can become competitive members of the global community.

We must dedicate the lion’s share of our national resources towards fixing our schools and training our teachers to better groom our children into tomorrow’s leaders.

I am of the firm view that every developing nation, South Africa included, should embrace free, quality education if it is to stand any chance of growing beyond a nation of great potential.

The resources are there in abundance.

What is needed is the political will to do away with nice-to-have projects and to push these resources towards building our children’s future.

To this end, it is my firm view that some of the failures we witness daily in our education system should be attributed to the disruptive role of labour in education.

As such, the national government should be bold enough to set boundaries and actually separate union involvement in the education of our children.

This is not to say that teachers should not enjoy union protection but it is the extent to which some unions have been allowed to dictate matters, much to the detriment of our children, that is of concern to me.

This matter should be treated with urgency, especially if we take into account the horrific reality that 80% of our public schools are failing and in crisis.

Distinguished guests,

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s consistency over many years in pursuit of social justice for the black majority, despite the threats to her life and those of her daughters, was a testament to her unflinching belief in the ideal of total emancipation for the black citizens of this country.

However, such cannot be said for some of the men who surrounded her, who buckled under the pressure of apartheid muscle and proceeded to dishonour the cause for freedom while spreading falsehoods and insinuations about her.

Such is the life of a woman in struggle, forced to labour in solitude only for the victors and their surrogates to rubbish her contribution and sully her memory.

But the German historian Leopold von Ranke teaches us that this was to be expected.

In seeking to understand why history was often slanted and lacking the fullness of the events it recorded, Von Ranke made a distinction between three kinds of history.

Largely credited as the founder of the field of empirical, research based history, Von Ranke distinguished between the three kinds of history as follows:

Firstly, he made note of the actual event, the details of which are lost forever.

Secondly, he identified the second kind of history as the reconstruction of the event, which he observed as the kind of exercise which could be undertaken only through research and verified, accountable and measured sources.

The last kind of history Von Ranke identified is the history we find in books, which he points out is ‘put there by people in power to promote a certain viewpoint or message and is almost always wrong’.

Von Ranke went on to observe that the powerful in society were prone to use history ‘as a tool’ and record it ‘to accomplish a particular philosophy or achieve a desired end’.

Revered British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would years later expand on Von Ranke’s thinking by declaring that: ‘History is written by the victors’.

Although Von Ranke and Churchill made their observations in the 1800s as well as the early to mid-1900s, respectively, perhaps largely influenced by what they had encountered in those times, they may just as well as have been referring to the treatment of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela by the authors of South Africa’s history - the so-called victors.

The current narrative around how our history unfolded does not recognise her.

It’s as though the drafters of history are ignoring her and are deliberately erasing her from history.

But the August 2016 elections ushered in a new era.

The aftermath of that election has provided all of us an opportunity to set matters right and recognise all of our heroes, especially Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

It is an opportunity for every Councillor of this Council to ensure that Winnie, the Mother of our Nation, is not erased from history.

It is an opportunity to ensure that she is immortalised.

This moment is not about writing history in favour one party or another.

It is about recognising an individual who paid her dues.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I had the fortune of briefly meeting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela a short time before her passing.

I was humbled by her encouragement and praise for the work our multi-party government was undertaking, in particular our Inner City rejuvenation project.

I informed her of our desire to rebuild the Inner City, turning it into a construction site and providing quality, low-cost housing for our people.

In our engagement, she had expressed interest in joining me on one of our monthly A Re Sebetseng clean-up campaigns.

I would have really loved the opportunity to be side-by-side with her on this initiative but because of her ill health, it was decided that it would be best to allow her to rest and gain strength.

But I would like us to carry on the spirit of A Re Sebetseng in her honour and ensure that this initiative evolves into other spheres of service.

I was also pleased to know that she was enthusiastic about our Inner City plan.

As a person who devoted herself to improving the lives of the underdog, personally, professionally and politically, she told me that she was proud that the City of Johannesburg was prioritising this project.

Distinguished guests,

History should never be subjective.

Instead, it should be an exercise in recording events as they happened and, additionally, to capture those events in their fullness and in context.

Irrespective of how we feel about particular individuals, we should recognise their contribution and understand that there was a time when they did good.

We should never ever allow a select few individuals the vast power to be able to decide which history should be recorded and how that history should be recorded.

If we allow that, we will end up hating the people who played significant roles in the attainment of our freedom and who, in the process, sacrificed much.

I am deeply concerned at the subjective manner with which our history is recorded.

Most of us grew up with a skewed sense of ourselves, primarily because of what the history we had been taught at school falsely told us about ourselves.

Unfortunately, this is the same skewed sense of self that many of our children will grow up with.

But as we confer the Freedom of the City on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, we seek not to impose our version of history, like the victors have done, but merely to insert significant parts which have otherwise been deliberately omitted in order to create a particular memory of Winnie.

We do this in order to create a holistic picture of a woman, who was of her time and who espoused the best of us and, perhaps, the worst of our excesses.

And we declare: we are Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and she is us. 

In closing,

I wish to say that we will always need people like Mam’uWinnie because they inspire commitment and determination in all of us who wish to bring meaning into the lives of others.

I would therefore like those of us gathered here today, to be grateful for Winnie’s life of value, for the way in which she sought to put service of others first.

In all of her pursuits, it is clear that she was a woman who loved her people and her country and was driven to make a difference in those whose lives she touched.

Many lives were shaped by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela throughout her life as an activist, and the values of service that she instilled in those she encountered throughout her life, will live on in those who knew her and will be emulated by those who seek to live a comparable life.

I have no doubt that her sense of service extended to her family.

It is necessary, therefore, to thank the Madikizela and Mandela families for sharing her with the people of South Africa, for sacrificing your precious family time, so that she could bring us freedom.

I hope that you all gain strength from the legacy she has left behind.

A life well lived deserves to be celebrated and emulated, and we would be well served by remembering each one of Winnie’s values that resonate with us, that we can take forward into our interactions and civic activities.

I therefore call on Council to expedite the approval of a proposal to name the City of Johannesburg’s Council Chambers after Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Additionally, Mrs Madikizela-Mandela’s family has requested that the City of Johannesburg honour the Mother of our Nation by hosting the Winnie Madikizela Mandela Children's Parliament, at least once a year, in these Chambers.

Should Council accede to this request, it would only be proper to host the Children’s Parliament on September 26 - the date of Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s birthday. 

An advocate for the rights of children and the youth - especially since the 1976 Student Uprisings - hosting a Children’s Parliament in her honour and in these Chambers would be a fitting tribute to a freedom fighter who has been betrayed by the beneficiaries of the freedom she also fought for.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela deserves much higher honours than the ones we are proposing to bestow upon her but it is the least we can do in appreciation of a life lived for the upliftment of all of us.

I thank you.

Issued by Luyanda Mfeka, Director: Mayoral Communications, Office of the Executive Mayor, 25 September 2018