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 Mourners, many clad in the green and yellow colours of the
ruling African National Congress (ANC), danced and sang in a
soccer stadium under gray skies.
"'Mam' Winnie contributed a lot to our struggle so it's
befitting that we are here today. We came to mourn and at the
same time celebrate that we have freedom," said Lucky Tshabalala,
37, a Soweto native and self-employed contractor.
"She means everything to me," he said.
Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for her husband Nelson
Mandela's release from jail during the years of white minority
rule and became a liberation hero in her own right. But her
legacy was later tarnished.
As evidence emerged in the dying years of apartheid of the
brutality of her Soweto enforcers, known as the "Mandela United
Football Club", some South Africans questioned her 'Mother of
the Nation' soubriquet.
Blamed for the killing of activist Stompie Seipei, who was found
near her Soweto home with his throat cut, she was convicted in
1991 of kidnapping and assaulting the 14-year-old because he was
suspected of being an informer.
Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a 2-year
suspended sentence on appeal.
But her death last week at the age of 81 after a long illness
was met by an outpouring of emotion on the streets of Soweto and
senior ANC leaders came to pay homage at the gates of her home
in the Johannesburg township.
She will be buried in Johannesburg on Saturday after almost two
weeks of mourning.
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"In life and death you remain unbreakable," David Mabuza, South
Africa's Deputy President said at the memorial service.
"Yours was a revolution of love seeking to usher a more huname world
for all the children in our land, black and white."
A leftist party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), was holding is
own memorial in the town of Brandfort in the Free State province, to
where she was banned for a decade by the apartheid government in the
1970s and 1980s.
EFF leader Julius Malema, an admirer of Madikizela-Mandela whose
fiery he evokes, said last week she had been prevented from
ascending to the presidency of South Africa by misogynists in the
ANC.
For many South Africans, the most memorable image of Madikizela-Mandela
is her punching the air in a clenched-fist salute as she walked
hand-in-hand with Mandela out of Victor Verster prison, near Cape
Town, on Feb. 11, 1990.
For husband and wife, it was a crowning moment that led four years
later to the end of centuries of white domination when Mandela
became South Africa's first black president.
Their marriage began to fall apart in the years after his release.
The couple divorced in 1996, nearly four decades after they were
married. They had two children together.
"She inspires me and wish other women in the current struggle could
be like her," said 18-year-old Zanele Ngubo, who was born after the
end of apartheid.
(Writing by Ed Stoddard,; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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