NHLANHLA MBATHA | Thirty-two years later, Madikizela-Mandela’s warnings echo in inequality

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ExpandMama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy of warning against ‘dummy freedom’ is echoing in today’s South Africa, says the writer. Picture: Bafana Mahlangu When Nelson Mandela walked out of prison in 1990, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was not just his wife welcoming him home. She was his most honest critic.

She had lived the struggle differently. While he negotiated the end of apartheid from inside prison and later from boardrooms, she lived through banishment to Brandfort, detention without trial, and the daily funerals of the 1980s.

She told him and the ANC leadership that they were rushing to accept political power while leaving economic power untouched. That would leave black people with what activists later called “a dummy freedom”.

Was she a prophet? No. She was a social worker who listened to the streets.

What did she see that others missed in the negotiations?

First, she saw that the deal at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) protected property over people. Section 25 of the constitution, the property clause, guarantees that land taken under the 1913 Land Act cannot simply be taken back without compensation.

The sunset clause kept apartheid civil servants in their jobs for five years. The independence of the Reserve Bank and the repayment of apartheid debt were agreed before the first democratic budget.

Second, she saw the demobilisation of the streets. The Mass Democratic Movement — street committees, rent boycotts, youth congresses — had made South Africa ungovernable. During negotiations, those structures were told to wait. Winnie argued that power concedes nothing without demand, and once you send people home, you lose leverage.

Why did she warn him? Because she loved him and she feared for him. At rallies she said the youth did not die for a flag. They died for a house, a job and land. If that did not come, future generations would have to go back to the streets and repeat the struggle.

Tata’s response was not arrogance. It was a calculated gamble to avoid civil war.

Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki believed South Africa was on the edge of a civil war. White generals had chemical weapons, the AWB was bombing, and the IFP-ANC war in KwaZulu-Natal killed 20,000 people.

He chose reconciliation as a strategy for survival: assure white South Africans, assure foreign capital, get political power, then slowly transform the economy through the Reconstruction and Development Programme, BEE and social grants.

The gamble bought peace. It did not buy equality.

Thirty-two years later the warning is visible everywhere. According to the 2017 land audit, white South Africans, who are 7.8% of the population, still own 72% of private farmland. South Africa remains the most unequal country in the world by Gini coefficient. Youth unemployment is above 60% in most townships.

In the 2021 local government elections, only 46% of registered voters turned out nationally — the lowest ever — and 12-million registered voters stayed home.

In 2024, the ANC fell to 40% for the first time. People are not apathetic. They queue for water tankers, protest when sewage flows in the streets, and go mad when there are no lights.

The second revolution Winnie predicted is not happening with AK-47s. It is happening with abstention and with service delivery protests.

We need both Mandelas. We needed Tata’s forgiveness to stop the bloodbath in 1994. We need Mama Winnie’s anger to finish the job in 2026.

That job will not be finished in boardrooms. It will be finished when political freedom is matched with economic ownership: title deeds for houses built in the 1980s, 30% of municipal repairs going to local SMMEs, and land that is actually redistributed.

Winnie was not a prophet. She was a mother who buried too many children and remembered what they asked for before they died — jobs, land and dignity.

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