Original subtitles

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present

one of the women in the struggle in South Africa

who stood not behind their men,

but for many years in front of them while their husbands were in prison.

And I ask you to share our excitement

in enjoying the company of Mrs. Winnie Mandela.

At the back entrance to the Pretoria Court,

large crowds gather to watch the accused

being driven away to start their life sentences.

Mandela and seven fellow prisoners

accused with him of sabotage

were all condemned to life imprisonment

after a trial that lasted eight months.

The government has crushed a plot

to overthrow the South African government by sabotage and revolution

with Communist assistance.

Mrs. Mandela, what are your feelings today

after the life sentence passed on your husband?

Well, I am slightly relieved. It could have been far worse than this.

In fact, my people and I expected death sentences for all the accused.

It was actually scary to visualize the future.

We were all caught up in that war of liberation.

The self no longer mattered. The country came first.

When they were incarcerated,

on hindsight, they actually looked after our leaders,

because from then on, the violence we witnessed in the country

was untold, and one doesn’t know what would’ve happened

to the leadership if they were out there with us.

We were the cannon fodder.

We were the foot soldiers. And we were vulnerable.

We were exposed to the viciousness of apartheid.

When they were incarcerated on Robben Island...

we were allowed one visit in six months.

We hardly actually knew each other.

We married in June 1958.

It’s like it happened yesterday.

I was just a young girl.

I just qualified as a social worker,

and he asked me to help them raise funds for the Treason Trial.

We oscillated towards each other, and that was it.

We were great lovers.

He was banned and confined to Johannesburg,

so he had to get permission to travel to my rural home, where we got married.

I came from a family of 11.

My father was a school principal.

He had a tremendous influence on me.

He would tell us about our ancestors fighting for their land

because these people had come to grab our country.

That is probably what made Winnie...

to be who she is today.

Winnie threw her entire weight into the struggle

in every conceivable way.

Winnie worked for the ANC.

Of course, that made her a huge target for the South African security police,

who hadn’t expected that.

They were quite surprised initially.

And then the head of the security police,

General Van den Bergh, said, "We will destroy this woman."

They understood that they had to destroy Winnie

if they wanted to destroy the struggle.

And of course, as soon as they focused on Winnie,

entered the inevitable barrage of informers and spies.

She was betrayed time and again by people that she trusted,

who inserted themselves into her life.

She very often ended up being arrested and shocked that people would do that.

These were trained people and were paid to share whatever they got to know.

When I was taken, the house

was swarming with the security branch, all white.

I remember Zeni clinging on my skirt,

and with little Zindzi behind, pulling me and saying,

"Mommy, Mommy, don’t go."

You were held in solitary confinement for months and months.

It was meant to kill you emotionally and to kill you to such an extent

that there were only two options.

You either decided

to fight to the last drop of your blood,

or you succumbed to the enemy and decided to work with them.

I love that picture-- Zeni and I with Mummy,

wearing her ANC douk.

It wasn’t an ANC douk, but it had the colors.

She used to love wearing that.

It’s the black and green.

You know, part of our flag.

Black for the people, green for the land.

That was the gate at our home-- Vilekazi Street.

With my mother, you’re not supposed to say, "Don’t," because then she will do.

If you’re going to say, "We’re going to ensure that we lock this man up,

that people forget him, they forget even what he looks like,

they forget what he sounds like, they forget that he even exists,"

that makes her commit to ensuring the opposite.

She’s an activist. She’s a fighter.

She’s not the type of person who can be voiceless.

By the mid-’70s, most of the African countries

up north, central Africa, were liberated,

and down south, there were still countries

that were still under colonial rule, but that was changing.

And when the students took to the streets,

protesting against Afrikaans being used as the medium of instruction,

the whole country was engulfed into this wave of violence.

We don’t even regard them

as Soweto riots as such, but a national disaster.

It is the beginning of what we have always warned

the nationalist, racist government about.

The system blamed Winnie for inciting those uprisings,

and she was taken away to a rural province

a hundred kilometers away from Johannesburg.

When they came to take my mum, we thought it was the usual raid.

They had taken her to Protea police station.

She is being interrogated and completely unaware

that she’s being packed up and sent to Brandfort.

Well, I had gotten so used to being arrested

that I had two little suitcases

where I packed the bare necessities-- toothbrush, toothpaste.

I was so used to that that I...

I honestly did not anticipate the punishment.

What is your lifestyle like here in Brandfort?

I am really here in, um, prison.

It’s really being in prison at your own expense,

being in exile in this kind of area.

Brandfort is really a living grave.

That’s in Brandfort.

That was second or third day there.

We didn’t know where we were. We’d never even heard of the place.

I think it was deliberately done

like, to take her from that relative comfort

of what she was more familiar with, like, at the house in Soweto,

to this harsh new reality where she knew absolutely nobody

and understood the language but didn’t speak it.

So it was designed to completely crush her

and make her feel isolated from everybody,

to make her feel trapped.

Even as we were driven to the house and we saw people walking past,

people were even afraid to look at us, to smile at us.

There was just this huge sense of fear.

The whites told the people who were working,

"You must be very, very careful about a Communist woman

who has been placed in your community.

Don’t talk to her."

And even the schoolchildren, they were told by their masters,

"Don’t talk to a certain woman called Winnie Mandela,

who has been placed in your community.

She is a Communist."

This area is an area for the whites.

You see now the Boers here.

You know, it was for the whites only.

Even on the station, we could not even sit on the benches.

"Whites only. Yours is just right down there."

The first thing I did, of course,

was to recruit soldiers into Umkhonto we Sizwe.

I arranged their transport from there to cross the borders into Lesotho.

Thousands from the Orange Free State.

The most important thing was communication.

I was getting my directives from the senior leadership,

O.R. and Chris Hani.

Our strategy at the time was you hit targets at the same time...

in the whole country so that they cannot measure

the power of the other side.

The ANC strategy of attacks on important economic targets

like this Sasol oil refinery

has also stepped up this year by a third on last year

and by four times on two years ago.

Would you be prepared to take up a gun and kill someone

in order to achieve what you would regard as your freedom?

Now I know I can.

- You would? - Now I know I can.

In the past, I didn’t.

But when I saw my children mowed down in Soweto in 1976,

then I realized that in order to defend that,

I would do exactly the same.

Up there, that mountain whereby the special branch

would stand over there using their telescopes

to see everything that is happening in Winnie’s house.

There’s thinking people, and people determined to survive,

and there’s fighters.

We just always, always managed to beat the system.

We had a coded way of speaking.

We would express ourselves in such a manner

that the enemy wouldn’t be able to detect what we're talking about.

I know, and the people of this country know,

that Mandela will lead this country to freedom.

It’s very hard now to imagine someone in a small place like Brandfort,

isolated in this dry, dusty township,

but who came out with such strength and such charisma,

and was the only person who would stand up in front of the media

and the international media...

and speak without inhibition.

It is the usual...

the usual cosmetic South African racist government story.

Act illegally, promote the aims of the ANC, quote her husband.

If your husband is released,

would he be prepared to go into exile into Zambia or elsewhere?

Not at all.

There she would stand up and do it without any sign of fear,

any concern for the law,

complete contempt for power and authority,

and it was an amazing show of strength and courage and fortitude.

We are prepared to respond likewise to the government that has declared war.

I was political reporter of the Rand Daily Mail,

and I was assigned to cover Kennedy’s trip.

So I went down to Brandfort.

And it was completely remarkable.

Thank you so much for letting me come by here.

But visitors managed to find her,

whether she was banned or in internal exile,

as the world began to respect her

as a dominant political force in South Africa.

In the same way people were supposed to forget about my father in prison,

they were supposed to forget about her in Brandfort,

and her spirit was supposed to be broken and so on,

and literally she was supposed to be written out of history.

It was a bold statement from the Kennedys

to acknowledge her role

and recognize that if they wanted to discuss the future of South Africa,

that she’s a key player.

She’s the constant. She was always there.

She was there before Tata and them went to prison.

She was there when her people were exiled.

Some people come in and out of history, but Mummy’s a constant.

Mr. Mandela’s release-- is there any possibility

that could happen anytime soon?

The moment he declares that he, uh,

would not be involved in the planning of violence,

he can be set free.

It is the ANC which is jailing him at present.

My father says, "I am a member of the African National Congress."

My father says,

"I cannot and will not give any an undertaking

at a time when I and you, the people, are not free.

Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

She was banned at the time. But she was there,

at the stadium dressed as a domestic worker,

and she was there in the audience, and nobody had a clue who she was.

Amandla! One South Africa!

The declaration of a state of emergency

was an admission of defeat.

The government had been battling the struggle

and had got nowhere with it-- not through political means,

not through terrorizing the population,

not through infiltrating the ANC.

And it was a declaration of war,

which meant that the ANC had no choice but to do the same.

The explosions caused extensive damage.

Inside, they ripped out the walls and floors.

Outside, windows were shattered in nearby buildings.

21 people died during the riot last week.

The fighting with police started after about 500 people had gathered

to protest against eviction from their homes.

State President PW Botha declared

a state of emergency in South Africa.

"The township riots," he said, "must stop."

This state of affairs can no longer be tolerated.

So for the army and police, a whole new arsenal of tough security laws.

The police, in their heavily armored Casper vehicles,

went back into the townships this morning.

The death toll has been rising almost every hour.

Emergency legislation that allows them to arrest anyone without a warrant,

imprison them without access to a lawyer,

impose curfews, and seal off townships at will.

...was now virtual warfare.

Local people say police were responsible for most of the killings.

Well, I’ve just seen 15 young people

with gunshot wounds all over their bodies.

When the police saw groups of young people

moving around the townships, they simply shot them.

Unprovoked. Just shot them.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s really... an ominous sign of the times ahead.

It is the beginning of what we have always feared.

When she came back from Brandfort in the mid-’80s,

which is when I met her for the first time,

we were on the precipice of either descending

into complete, total anarchy or trying to rescue the situation.

The 1985 state of emergency

and the 1986 one which followed shortly thereafter

saw more than 10,000 to 15,000 mainly children, really, being detained.

What the regime wanted to do was-- effectively to intimidate

the whole country into submission

and basically clean out the activist layer that was there

but also send a message

that they’re not going to tolerate any dissent.

Apartheid is a criminal act!

The white man has the audacity--

He is three and a half million. We are 30 million!

The Botha regime can go to hell!

Power to the people!

She was the only person who could wake up

and wear ANC colors, go to a meeting, and shout,

"Long live ANC," and then go home.

If any one of us had dared to do something like that,

then you would know that’s the day you must leave the country.

And that was a very important position--

to have somebody in the country who can

defiantly be a member of the ANC, openly be a member of the ANC.

And quite frankly, the system didn’t know what to do with her,

because she-- it was just a state of defiance.

The resistance movement had actually penetrated

to levels where even if you took another 10,000,

there was just going to be another layer.

Those who tell us the moral thing to do is to embargo

the South African economy and write off South Africa

should tell us exactly what they believe will rise in its place.

Strategically, this is one of the most vital regions of the world.

Around the Cape of Good Hope passes the oil of the Persian Gulf.

Southern Africa and South Africa are repository of many

of the vital minerals for which the West has no other secure source of supply.

But the South African government is under no obligation

to negotiate the future of the country with any organization

that proclaims a goal of creating a communist state

and uses terrorist tactics and violence to achieve it.

The head of the ANC called a news conference

at the palace of Westminster.

Angry the government won’t see him unless he renounces violence,

he insists the violence comes equally from President Botha.

It’s a bit heartless

to keep saying the ANC must abandon its violence,

because that is saying that the regime is not violent.

Even at a time when daily on the television screens,

we are seeing the regime shooting down children.

She was considered one of the most senior commanders

of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

She and Chris Hani worked closely together,

And that relationship grew over the period of the ’80s.

So she was basically the highest authority inside the country.

Apartheid was so vicious. They were killing our people.

It was safer for all the operatives underground

to come into the country, hit a target, and go back to Lusaka,

because at the time, the enemy was shooting to kill.

I used to receive the ammunition from outside.

It would be buried,

and Lusaka would then send a map

of exactly where the weapons were,

and I had to see to it that we went to dig up at dead of night

the stuff that had been buried there.

I was with the security branch

and arrested many terrorists from Umkhonto we Sizwe,

the armed wing of the ANC,

and had them sentenced

to 80 years’ imprisonment,

and some of them hanged.

All my black agents had to infiltrate the ANC, trade unions,

and of course, the South African Communist Party.

And I also had a surveillance team,

with cameras, tape recorders, and so forth.

When it comes to Winnie Mandela,

she’s always been on the radar.

We were aware of her activities,

listening to her telephone conversations,

and were following her around.

And had people all around her.

She was closely monitored by the security branch.

We were soon in a position to persist in keeping the country under control,

but then other things came into play.

Recently Mandela was moved from Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town

to a hospital for treatment of TB.

The world got a fleeting glimpse of the man it hadn’t seen for years.

The hospital visit fueled speculation about his release.

The Mandela demonstrators assembled in their thousands

in a north London park before setting off on a march through the capital.

South Africa needs Nelson Mandela!

The world needs Nelson Mandela!

Towards the end of 1988,

Nelson Mandela was moved to hospital.

And Winnie goes down to Cape Town to meet him

and, as fate would have it, is on the same flight

as the Minister of Justice, Kobie Coetzee, who was a hard-liner.

Mummy approached Kobie Coetzee at an airport.

She was leaving to see my father, and she confronted him openly and said,

"I want to know from you, when are you going to release my husband?"

I went to sit next to him,

and Kobie Coetzee said, "What will it take to shut you up

so that we can release your husband?

Who should we talk to?"

I said, "Who are you talking to now?"

After the initial shock

and that type of, like, in-your-face confrontation,

they began to have a conversation,

and that conversation eventually led to an exchange

between this apartheid minister of justice,

where there was no justice, and my father as a prisoner.

It started with this woman,

whose role is so often overlooked and disregarded.

Is he going to come out?"

No we don’t know. I am visiting him again tomorrow.

She planted the seed, and the rest is history.

And it’s then that the discussions started taking place

between Nelson Mandela through Dr. Neil Barnard,

from National Intelligence Service,

and the ball started rolling towards a political solution.

The answer to, "Why was Nelson Mandela

the God-given... individual

with whom we could start that?"

Was, 27 years in prison made him a worldwide icon.

On TV] In July 1988, over 200 million people

tuned in to a pop extravaganza

held as a tribute to Nelson Mandela on his 70th birthday.

The ANC leaders in exile

didn’t focus their attention on Mandela for a long time.

But now, positioning themselves internationally for change,

they understood that Mandela,

thanks to all Winnie’s ceaseless efforts for more than two decades,

was perhaps their ticket.

We had the pinnacle of power under our control,

and quite clearly, he was more than interested in

starting talks to try to-- also from his side to find out,

can we find some kind of understanding?

It was quite clear that at a certain point,

the ANC was going to take over the government of the country.

So therefore, it was important to work on him on his own,

without the leadership in Pollsmoor Prison.

I think it’s a wonderful idea of Kobie Coetzee--

Let us prepare the man in normal circumstances,

in a house where he can,

at least for some time, lead a normal life.

Although it is on the area

being controlled by Correctional Services, called a prison,

it's a normal house.

Victor Verster was very strange.

This false sense of reality that they were trying to give him.

Yes, we, uh... we bugged the house in which he lived.

It’s no secret.

And we were discussing with Mandela, and I myself many times,

"Sir...

we have a problem with Winnie.

She’s your wife."

My father was actually quite, um, excited,

because he had been told--

he was offered that his family can now move in with him.

And then my mother had to come with this blow, to say,

"You will not. We will not become glorified prisoners.

I will not allow you to do that and compromise yourself."

...how the visit was and whether it’s clarified things for you?

Yes, of course. It has clarified things a great deal.

She was very much in his life

as that wake-up factor--

you know, wake-up factor--

and always the person who had the ground intelligence.

He would have loved to go with us today,

and he would love to be released any day,

and he wants to come home, like all the leaders.

His release is not in his hands.

Madiba wasn’t aware of it at first.

Isolating him from the rest of the prisoners

was in fact to work on him

in such a manner...

that he would come out of prison

actually preaching as much peace as possible,

to protect-- to protect them, more than anything else.

The townships were war zones.

There were tanks and armed personnel carriers in Soweto.

Who are you? What are you doing?

The youth were up in arms.

There was enormous anger

from the side of the youth towards the elders,

whom they saw as not fighting hard enough.

And Winnie understood more than anybody else in the ANC

that the younger generation were the hope for the future.

Mandela FC has been demonized.

At the time, there was a war between comrades

and carjackers, who were used by the system--

you know that whole black-on-black violence.

They were using them against each other,

so there’s a lot of brutality and fighting there.

For the friends and relatives of Victoria Nxenge...

Secondly, Victoria Nxenge had been assassinated in Durban.

The civil rights lawyer was gunned down in her own driveway

after a day spent preparing the defense of two fellow

United Democratic Front members facing high treason charges.

So at the same time that Mummy’s thinking,

"We need to remove these children off the streets,"

these children are thinking, "We need to protect our leader,"

because leaders were vulnerable and were killed.

I met Winnie when I was harassed by the security branch forces.

I stayed in her house for the hiding place.

She taught me about the politics of the ANC--

what is the ANC and all-- and what it’s all about in the ANC--

and she taught me about the army things.

About the armed struggle, what is the armed struggle,

and what a guerilla army is.

Because that time the slogan was, "Disarm the enemy and arm the people."

I joined the Mandela Football Club there.

At that time, I thought that it was just a football club.

But when times go on, I saw that these guys are...

are cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

There were about eight guys

guarding the house and the family of Winnie.

There were track suits that we wear of Mandela FC.

But when time goes on, we saw that

people now are crying about Mandela Football Club.

We found that people were using our track suits

to rape and kill sometimes.

They kill people and say, "Yes, Winnie’s boys."

They thought it’s us.

So we stopped using our uniforms.

Oh, you couldn’t communicate with them at all.

They said they were waiting for Protea because

the boys were wearing illegal t-shirts or some kind of rubbish like that.

We were not allowed by Mama to interrogate someone.

But us, in our corners, we were doing it

to get the information, who’s working for the security branch...

for the enemy side.

It was 1989.

I was still with the Intelligence Section.

And President PW Botha said,

"We must come up with a psychological warfare strategy

against the enemy."

Everything was coordinated between the defense force,

national intelligence, and foreign affairs.

It was called Covert Strategic Communication.

STRATCOM.

We are being agitated against worldwide

and threatened in the name of freedom and liberation.

Pressure is being exerted on us as the arch-oppressors of our time.

Many of the methods involved are suspect

because of either the slyness or the dishonesty involved.

I had different projects approved by him.

One was Operation Romulus.

Now, Romulus was, uh,

counter-revolutionary.

So Winnie Mandela fell amongst... those people.

I already had about 40 journalists working directly or indirectly for me.

So through them, I could have specific reports

placed in newspapers, and it would be front-page.

Four members of the football club were arrested

in a raid on Winnie Mandela’s house on Sunday.

Police gathered all their possessions in a detailed search for evidence.

Stompie Moeketsi was kidnapped by the so-called Football Squad.

Stompie, suspected of being a police informer,

was later murdered.

The charges will add to growing controversy

about the Football Club bodyguards.

Throughout the eight-hour operation,

Winnie Mandela had cooperated fully with the police,

though she insisted that the boys had nothing to do

with the murder of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi on Sunday.

The kind of reporting we have seen,

the deliberate and mischievous lies that keep being perpetrated by the media

is beyond anything we have seen.

A political funeral with a difference.

Just this once, the South African government allowed full news coverage,

normally banned under the emergency, and kept police out of sight,

all because the murder of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi

is blamed not on the state

but on the bodyguards of Winnie Mandela.

Police imposed no restrictions at this funeral,

raising accusations they’re trying to exploit Stompie’s killing

and deepen divisions among blacks.

Plainclothed police with cameras watched from a distance,

but authorities made no move to interfere.

His murder has outraged many South Africans,

sparking divisions within the anti-Apartheid movement.

Many black activists are refusing to back Mrs. Mandela

and have severed all ties with her.

The Mass Democratic Movement at this point

hereby wishes to distance itself from Mrs. Mandela and her actions.

Throughout the town, graffiti were scrawled on billboards,

charging Winnie Mandela with involvement in Stompie’s murder.

There’s no rift whatsoever between the African National Congress

and this family and never will be.

Perhaps the idea is to so destabilize

the political situation in black communities

that the government simply sits back

and look at us fighting amongst each other,

discrediting each other dividing each other, and, uh,

and it would suit the government to release Comrade Mandela

in that political atmosphere.

Many people to this day believe that we tried to divide and rule.

The whole notion is not historically correct.

She had all the capacity to be a Jackie Kennedy.

And, you know, even from the intelligence service side,

we discussed and hoped and dreamed, even...

that she must play a responsible role

at the side of Nelson Mandela.

He will become president, she will be first lady,

the mother of the nation, so to speak,

and we will all be

working together in this new-- this new country.

Sadly, that was not to be.

I’m now in a position to announce that Mr. Nelson Mandela

will be released at the Victor Verster prison

on Sunday the 11th of February, at about 3:00 p.m.

Perhaps this is the moment...

to thank the organizations...

individuals, groups, governments,

and all those who have campaigned for this day.

There is a clear sign of movement.

This is the hour the world has been waiting for.

There’s Mr. Mandela, Mr. Nelson Mandela,

a free man, taking his first steps into a new South Africa.

Mrs. Winnie Mandela next to him waving to the crowds.

Hand in hand...

they leave the Victor Verster prison.

Officials, marshals of the National Reception Committee

trying to get the people--

and a salute from Mr. Nelson Mandela.

His wife, Winnie, greeting the people

outside the fences of the Victor Verster prison.

That is the man who the world has been waiting to see.

People running alongside the car.

In many ways,

when he was in prison,

Mandela was looking at the world through Winnie’s eyes,

because she brought back information to him.

He in turn trusted her with information

he really didn’t trust anybody else with.

And so that moment of him seeing this new world

into which he’s released through Winnie’s eyes is so poignant.

Prior to his release,

I would say about ten days before his release,

I had one of my last discussions with him,

and I told him, "Sir, may I give you some advice?

The first speech after your release, the world will be looking.

Please don’t make one of those long, struggle,

slogan, ideological speeches.

Do not fall back to apartheid and whatever happened wrong,

and "you will carry on with the struggle" and so forth and so on.

Be brief, say, 'Here we are.

We’re carrying on to make peace. Thank you for everybody.

You will understand that I’m tired now,' and things like that.

Just-- you will have your time for speeches."

That was not to be.

- Amandla! - Ewutu!

- Amandla! - Ewetu!

- I-Afrika! - Mayibuye!

- Mayibuye! - I-Afrika!

The point when he’s on the balcony

making his first speech, as a free man,

but reading what he had written with Winnie’s glasses,

because he had misplaced his own is so symbolic

of Winnie’s role in Mandela’s life for so long.

The factors which necessitated the armed struggle

still exist today!

- We have no option... - I was with my family...

- ...but to continue. - ...watching it.

At that moment, I had already started calling

some of our sources, asking them, "What the hell is going on?"

Because I was sitting there and-- what is going on?

What we’ve been working on can develop into a catastrophe.

What of course was really sad

is that Mandela did not specifically talk about Winnie’s role

in the time that he was in prison.

For many people, it was an oversight.

He should have given Winnie the recognition that she deserved,

at least alluded to the fact that he would not have been there

had it not been for her and her ceaseless work

and organizing and her suffering

and everything that she sacrificed in order to get him there.

I was horrified when I realized that I had lost my identity.

And suddenly I was nobody.

Mandela’s wife.

I’m absolutely excited to be out.

We are loyal and disciplined members of the organization.

It is my intention

to go to Lusaka at the earliest possible convenience.

They will tell me what role I should play.

When people on the ground know who their leaders are,

there’s nothing that you can do successfully

to alter that relationship,

because that is genuine, and that is real,

and that is historically-- historically strong.

I think they were too formidable.

I think together as a couple,

they were just too powerful as a couple.

You've got these people who-- who are so influential

within their communities and beyond,

they have impacted, and they’re together,

and they have this ability to see things from two different perspectives

but wanting the same thing, for the same objective.

I just think it was too much power to have as a couple,

and I think there were various people who felt threatened by this.

And for anybody who had an agenda,

they had to get rid of this.

They had to get rid of this solid foundation first

and then proceed.

Nelson Mandela got a rousing welcome from the city of New York today,

as he began a ten-day tour across the United States.

The former longtime political prisoner will address Congress

and the United Nations, and he’ll be received at the White House.

I made a documentary film

through the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Of course, I had all the friends there.

And we put all the material together,

and that I flogged into America,

and it was shown on 40 different channels.

And that led to her being declared an international terrorist.

And when she wanted to visit America with him,

Americans said, "No, you can’t come, because you’re still on our list.

So they had to delete her name specially for her to come.

It is true.

I am much angrier than him.

It is true I have personally found it very, very difficult

to believe in the sincerity...

of the ruling class, the Afrikaner.

I do battle with myself about believing their sincerity.

As far as I’m concerned, we will watch that negotiation table.

If anything goes wrong there,

I will be the first to go back to the bush,

take up arms, and fight the South African government.

Mandela had gone to an emergency meeting

of the African National Congress to discuss black factional violence,

when the government filed charges against his wife.

At the courthouse, a strong show of support for the Mandelas.

The government has claimed the charges against Winnie Mandela

are not politically motivated.

The case involves 14-year-old Stompie Sepei.

Today Winnie Mandela was formally charged with kidnapping and assault

in the death of a teenager allegedly murdered by her bodyguards.

The government arrested Mrs. Mandela’s bodyguard,

convicted him of murder, and last month sentenced him to death.

It’s taken authorities nearly two years to charge her,

and many in the black community suspect that the government

may be using their case to harm the Mandelas

and the African National Congress.

That was the intention of apartheid--

to break things down, to break down family units,

to fragmentize anything that was black unity.

That was the purpose.

So in many ways, they succeeded in creating some kind of division.

So then they tried to pitch my parents like the saint and the sinner.

And you’re thinking like, what even gives you the right?

It was a period of ambivalence.

The return of the exiles,

which is what she was tasked to do by the ANC.

This was now the beginning of the negotiations

and the doubts as to whether this was the real thing or not.

The ANC was making critical choices

about compromises it was prepared to make

and the path it was setting the country on.

And what was dominant in the ANC was a kind of

centrist, middle-of-the road preparedness

to concede a great deal and to make the deals both with

Afrikaner nationalism and with global capitalism.

I personally feel that we over-negotiated in CODESA,

Because we found that capital-- capitalism

is a very difficult system,

because the owners of production...

the owners of resources, are those who are in power.

There was a very important constituency

led by the likes of Chris Hani, in which Winnie was a critical figure,

who were arguing against too much compromise,

against that middle-of-the road path

and looking for a socialist transformation.

The ANC leadership were looking to manage her,

contain her as part of the attempt to contain those left-wing forces.

The incident with Stompie Sepei and Jerry Richardson

is symptomatic of what happened with Winnie throughout her life.

With all the informers that had been planted who changed

their testimony by 180 degrees in court, what exactly was the truth?

They had testified that she hadn’t been there.

Then they changed their minds and said that she had been there.

How could anybody have really come to a reliable verdict

with all that murkiness around that case?

For anti-apartheid groups in South Africa,

scenes like these are a cause for despair.

In areas of the Natal Province, black-on-black violence

has reached proportions of near civil war

as political factions wage running battles for control

of the local black townships.

It was a critical period in the interim between 1990 and ’94,

where the balance of power was being played out.

The apartheid government in its negotiations

was trying to elevate the status

of the Inkhata Freedom Party as an alternative,

as a counter to the ANC.

The biggest obstacle of all now to the liberation of South Africa

and to the sorting out of things in South Africa is caused

by this black-on-black violence,

because even if the whites were prepared to negotiate tomorrow,

I mean, we blacks are still busy butchering each other.

There was a high and dangerous level of black-on-black violence

that threatened to destabilize the whole transition process.

It was not really black-on-black violence

but government-instigated or supported or encouraged attempts

to weaken and undermine the ANC as its chief negotiating partner.

I actually said to Madiba at one point,

"We know these people.

We fought against them not only politically,

not on platforms, we fought them physically.

We know each other.

We know each other so well that we cannot trust

the apartheid state forming any government of unity with you."

It is quite clear

that the government has either lost control over the police,

or the police are doing what the government wants them to do.

I take very strong exception

to the alleged statement attributed to Mr. Mandela

to the effect that I am seeking to promote my cause

over the corpses of his supporters.

Nelson Mandela is under siege,

his search for a peaceful end to apartheid in jeopardy,

and now his wife’s prosecution

threatening to further damage the Mandela name.

I have never believed...

that she was guilty of assaulting anyone.

It was not some façade.

I think he believed deep down in his whole being,

as we all did, that this was part of a wider conspiracy

aimed at her but also aimed at him.

Nelson Mandela, borne by the dignity of his moral crusade

but tainted now by the woman he loves and cannot bring himself to criticize.

But, as ever, unbowed, she’ll now appeal,

and as ever, with the full support of her husband.

Strategic communications is the planned,

coordinated, presentation of a message

by means of various communication instruments

to change attitudes, values, and to reach national objectives.

When it comes to Winnie Mandela,

we were more concentrating on her personal life,

which was in tatters,

and so easily...

to see and to hear and to expose.

So many people would read it, and it’s not going to cost us a cent.

That was the purpose, my purpose.

I was given that letter by Nelson...

who was given it

by the editor of the Sunday Times.

I had to go to Winnie and ask her whether it was genuine or not.

She looked at it...

burst into tears...

and said she was betrayed.

Obviously, it was some witch hunt

which was meant to isolate her.

There was even then a-- a clear campaign

to delegitimize, as it were, the so-called radical wing of the ANC.

Mandela was given the ultimatum

to divorce Winnie, to, in fact, get rid of Winnie or be president.

That was the ANC leadership who decided on that.

In view of the tensions that have arisen owing to differences between ourselves

in a number of issues in recent months...

we have mutually agreed

that a separation would be best for each one of us

You know, Mummy wouldn’t make it seem like she suffered that much.

But that’s the thing, Mummy’s just always had that capacity,

you know, to die inside, you know,

and, like, just be beaming and glowing externally.

She’s just always been that person.

I was at home when Chris was killed.

Chris Hani was shot four times in the driveway

of his own home in a quiet Johannesburg suburb, Dawn Park.

I do not know how one puts

the degrees of hurt and...

a feeling of total helplessness, a feeling of despair.

It was so clear that it was a very complicated assassination.

You couldn’t attribute it to the enemy completely.

85,000 South Africans pay homage to a revolutionary.

ANC leader Chris Hani received a statesman’s funeral.

When he was killed,

one of the hopes of the country was gone.

Here was a man who had led

the military wing of the African National Congress.

We literally worshipped Chris Hani.

We dreamt of a South Africa where he would be president one day.

Those who have deliberately created this climate

that legitimates political assassination

are as much responsible for the death of Chris Hani

as the man who pulled the trigger.

We want an election date now!

After Chris Hani was assassinated,

the country was in flames.

Winnie’s appeal came up barely three months later.

There would have been enormous violence

if Winnie had been sent to prison.

I don’t think any court would at that point

have thought it prudent to deny her appeal.

One candidate who could be a problem for the ANC,

particularly in attracting moderate voters, is Winnie Mandela.

Her overwhelming popularity in the townships has put her

number five on the ANC list,

and she’ll almost certainly become a cabinet minister.

I never went away. I’ve always been with my people.

That is why they have spoken.

My political aspirations have never changed.

I’m where I belong--

the parliament of the people.

I’ve been put there by the masses of this country.

I have never stood for a position

and said, "I’m available! I’m available!

Elect me as president of the Women’s League."

No, I’ve never done that.

She had already made it quite clear that she didn’t see eye to eye

with Mandela and the ANC about much of the policies,

that she leaned towards a more socialistic state,

that she wouldn’t have bent over backwards

to accommodate the former rulers and oppressors, etcetera.

So they needed to isolate her to eliminate her

from the inner circle of the ANC.

It is the realization

of our hopes and dreams...

that we have cherished over decades.

It was all a question of the ANC

understanding Winnie’s power, understanding how easily

she could mobilize ground root support.

There’s no question in my mind that, had she been embraced by the ANC,

had they made her part of the inner circle,

she would’ve been deputy president,

and she would have been president after Mandela.

That’s then I felt triumphant.

After such a bitter struggle...

after losing so much blood, after losing almost everything we had...

our children, our uncles, our aunts...

That moment is indescribable.

When he became president, and Winnie was not even seated

with the VIP guests, it was just heartbreaking

that Mandela would not allow her to even be seen

as a very important person on that occasion.

And one understands that his ego had been injured by Winnie.

However, he was always so fair to everybody.

One would expect of somebody of that stature

to be able to overcome that.

If he could forgive other people for such terrible transgressions against him

and against the country and his family, he could have done that for Winnie.

I had achieved everything I fought for.

What more did I want? I didn’t care for this.

It was just like water on a duck’s back. It still is, to this day.

As long as he would be president of the country

and lead the people to liberation, that’s all that mattered to me.

Never... never...

and never again

shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience

the oppression of one by another.

I realized that

there was this huge program,

that I became a project to certain people.

I became a project to prepare Madiba for this presidency.

There had to be all kinds of hangers-on around him

who continued this program of discrediting me.

Madiba was safer without me because I would always see through

the political intricacies of their plans.

During 1994, I received a phone call

from the commissioner of the South African police service

that I must come to his office

because the Minister of Safety and Security want to see me.

He told us that he was a member of the executive committee

of the ANC during those times,

and that we must start a-- re-start the investigation

into all the cases against Winnie Mandela.

And we must start from Stompie Sepei right through

and try to get evidence that Winnie can be charged for murder.

I think there was some political motivation behind him

because the Minister is the political head of the police,

and I thought that the ANC, through Sidney Mufamadi,

were behind the request to re-investigate Winnie Mandela.

So we started this whole investigation.

We went to Jerry Richardson in prison.

He was serving a life sentence for the killing of Stompie Sepei.

And there he told me Stompie found out

he was a registered informer of the security branch in Soweto.

So he killed Stompie Sepei to cover his own tracks,

and Winnie Mandela must never find out that he was a registered informer.

The Minister gave us carte blanche money-wise, logistic-wise,

and we can travel through the world where we need to go.

And there was a South African citizen closely involved with Winnie Mandela

in the custody of a British MP.

He lived in her house and so on.

Watching this, what was in your heart?

Katiza Khebukulu has since become famous.

He was the central character in a book and a BBC documentary.

He was rescued by British baroness Emma Nicholson,

who has since taken him under her wing.

She should go down for life.

They’re not going to forget.

That evidence is going to be theirs.

But you will find that the book also contains

very significant material

on the events that surround his testimony.

I mean, it was a very clear portrayal

of demonizing somebody who spent the rest of her life

trying to liberate South Africa.

And it was very clear that, uh,

its orientation was to delegitimize her,

make her look like a criminal and a hater.

I have watched in painful silence

my character being butchered in the media.

I have witnessed my contribution to this democracy

being vilified and ridiculed.

South Africa, I ask:

is it public interest that my name is littered

all over the streets of this country?

That the media vandalize my dignity without just cause?

Order, please.

We are here not in order to put anyone in the dock.

Our objective is to find out the truth

in order to assist in the process of healing our land...

to promote reconciliation, and to ensure that the awful things

we hear about will not happen again.

From the word go, the charges started piling up.

The first day’s witnesses implicated Madikizela Mandela

in four serious assaults and six murders.

To me, the TRC was a trial.

It was not established to--

to find out anything other than the fact that I was being re-tried,

being humiliated to show that I was not fit to be his wife.

The first day of the hearing was a huge surprise because

I hadn’t anticipated such a wide international interest in her story.

The allegations that were coming out were serious.

They were of a criminal kind, and yet, there was no criminal investigation

in relation to those issues.

They were there in a platform that enjoyed international attention.

And there was no way her image

was not going to be marred by that process.

Katiza Cebukhulu says he saw Madikizela Mandela

stab Stompie with a shiny object one night.

It was something that was shining.

After the hand was raised for the first time, did you see what--

She was stabbing. She stabbed twice.

It was obvious that one was also dealing with witnesses

whose credibility was questionable but whose motives were clear.

They wanted money, and in exchange,

they were going to say anything and everything against Winnie.

I do not have any police friends.

I did know a lot of police, but I was not friends with them.

On Tuesday, the so-called coach of the football club

and the man who was convicted of killing Stompie Sepei,

Jerry Richardson, will testify.

He has said that he killed Stompie Sepei on the orders of Winnie.

I slaughtered him.

I slaughtered him like a goat.

But Jerry Richardson’s credibility as a witness was undermined this week

when he confessed to being a police informer.

Richardson was in prison by that time.

He may have been promised

that they will help him somehow.

They knew I didn’t kill Stompie.

I was being tried just as a farce.

I was the only one in the African National Congress

who was taken to the TRC by her own government.

The only one.

I thought they were criminalizing her

so that they can politically neutralize her.

Is there an opinion by a section of our country

about the nomination of yourself

to the deputy presidency of the African National Congress in December?

Yes, that is true.

As a matter of fact, as far as I was concerned,

the subpoena could have been served last year,

could have been served many, many moons ago,

and the unhealthy coincidence in my mind...

that this must happen...

a few days before the national conference...

to me suggests it is part and parcel of that agenda.

The whole perception of reconciliation

was gotten completely wrong, because it has been misinterpreted

in terms of what it was supposed to achieve.

Then Winnie Mandela becomes demonized because she remains

the voice of the downtrodden and the conscience of the people,

that voice that says we were not treated right,

and we’re still not being treated right.

That’s the reality.

I speak to you as someone who loves you very deeply...

who loves your family very, very, deeply.

I would have said to you, "Let us have a public meeting...

and at that public meeting for you to stand up and say,

‘There are things that went wrong.

There are things that went wrong...

and I...

I don’t know why they went wrong.’

And say, ‘I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for my part... in what went wrong.’"

I was seething with rage.

To this day...

I ask God to forgive me...

for not forgiving him.

He was acting there for the public...

acting there for STRATCOM...

begging me to say I was sorry?

I beg you.

I beg you.

- I wasn’t going to say sorry... - I beg you.

...as if I had been responsible for apartheid.

I mean, how dare? Really!

You are a great person...

and you don’t know how your greatness would be enhanced...

if you were to say, "Sorry.

Things went wrong. Forgive me."

I beg you.

The one person

who kept the fires burning when everybody was petrified--

and I didn’t blame them, because of those

dark forces of apartheid were killing our people like flies.

I didn’t blame them

when sometimes I would shoot that fist alone,

and they were too petrified.

You put me on trial before the TRC,

and a Desmond Tutu sits there judging me.

Judging me!

For the first 20 years, it was accepted

that compromises were made, that deals were made,

and that they had to be made,

and that worked for the better of everyone because it gave us

what’s loosely called a peaceful transition.

But now you are very clearly seeing young people saying, "But hold on.

The reason we still have so much inequality,

the reason we are so frustrated in our attempts to study

and advance and change our lives and change our children’s lives

is because of those compromises you made in the 1990s.

I think the way it is going to end in South Africa is that

people like Winnie Mandela will be vindicated.

There will come a time where history will remember

that some of the skepticism that they had about the so-called miracle

of the solution that was found in the ’90s was justified.

I think already people are beginning to wonder

whether we were not sold a dummy, as it were, that the deal was one-sided,

and that the racist regime got away with murder, literally.

To this day,

when I sit in Parliament,

every time I press that blue button,

I’m constricted with pain.

Did it take so much loss of life, so much blood,

in order for me to vote?

It cost us so much.

And it continues to cost us so much.

We dreamt of a South Africa...

that was totally free of racialism...

a South Africa where everyone...

would be fed equally...

where youth would be employed...

where the scarce resources would have been available

for the dreams we instilled in them.

The Freedom Charter says the wealth of the country

belongs to all who live in it.

That is a South Africa I would have loved to leave one day.