Mandela forgave apartheid criminals & never could pardon his wife Winnie!, Is that forgiveness?

In 2001 the Archbishop Desmond Tutu chair of South African's Truth and Reconciliation said verbatim: "Reconciliation means that those who have been on the underside of history must see that there is a qualitative difference between repression and freedom. And for them, freedom translates into having a supply of clean water, having electricity on tap, being able to live in a decent home and have a good job; to able to send your children to school and accessible to health care. I mean, what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life of these people is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless."

Mrs Winnie Mandela and ANC were true nationalists; their struggle was independence for all who live in South Africa. During the fight for independence, the ANC was guided by the Freedom Charter, a document that was going to be the voice of the suffering masses, the black people. The Congress in Klipstown in 1955 in Johannesburg came up with resolutions coming from peoples-of-colour in South Africa. The Freedom Charter enshrined that:

• The land be given to landless people
• Living wages and shorter hours of work
• The right to reside and move about freely
• Free and compulsory education irrespective of colour, race nationality and many more  

The Freedom Charter was an inspiration to all oppressed South Africans, it was produced by them from all parts of the country. Nelson Mandela promised the people of South Africa that those aspirations enshrined in the Freedom Charter were the ideals he was prepared to live and possibly die fighting for.  It was Auntie Winnie Mandela who spearheaded a worldwide mass movement and among other positive actions Auntie Winnie Mandela and ANC accomplished was the boycott of export products coming from South Africa's Apartheid regime that was meant to squeeze the racist regime from power.  

But the brutal regime brutally manhandled Winnie to the point of madness. She was incarcerated several times in different prisons; sometimes her small children then were left alone when the racist police came and brutally packed her to prison isolations for months and for years: she was sometimes left nak*d for days without proper dressing. This behaviour of the Apartheid police radicalized Winnie Mandela equally. Having suffered so inhuman under the racist Apartheid she was ever eager and determined to see a real independent South Africa and not pseudo-independence.

 After 27 years incarceration in many parts of Apartheid prisons including Robin, Mandela was released from prison. We remember all these media coverages, how he elegantly left prison hand-in-hand with his dear wife Winnie. The great task was ahead of him, and he was aware of the challenges ahead of him from the racist government and the ANC Party. Voices about his wife's unbecoming behaviour during his absence crowded him. Mandela was quick to say that he was to remain behind his wife, and will stand by her and assist her emotionally where things may have gone wrong with her during his incarceration. He left his wife Winnie to prison and she was not protected in his absence, he said. He stood by her, disregarding even the Party-ANC who even dared to tell Madiba Mandela that he needed to choose between his wife and the Party-ANC.

When Mandela left prison, the world had changed: so many African countries had been liberated. He came to an Africa torn apart by wars and counter-revolutions, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola were liberated countries. Socialism in other countries was quashed by counter-revolutionaries. In Southern Cone of America Che Guevara had been assassinated by the CIO in the thick bushes of Bolivia. So many political developments in the African continent including the global technology itself had changed. He had a short space of time catch up with everything that would inform South Africa's transformation from Apartheid regime to a rainbow nation. The independence was going to be a negotiated one and not a win through the barrel of the gun.

The political and economic transformations that took place after the release of Mandela from prison were interesting to follow up and comprehend all processes with our simple minds. Before the negotiations could even start, most corporate institutions started packing and left South Africa. Richard's Branson's Virgin Group left, Oppenheimer and his giant Diamond Company relocated his offices from Johannesburg to Switzerland, many other companies left because of mistrust of incoming black government.

Among other challenges Mandela had was to avoid imminent civil war and prevent economic collapse resulting from the change of white to a black government and the corporate exodus from South Africa. On one hand, the National Party of F. W. De Klerk were keen to negotiate as much power on their side as possible. De Klerk wanted to preserve white supremacy in government as possible but failed. On the other hand, Mandela and ANC had the aspirations of the Freedom Charter to be part of the economic and political negotiations with the racist government and the Nationalist Party. To Mandela's credit and his chief negotiator Cyril Ramaphosa: they won all political aspects of political transformations. Mandela gave the economists in the ANC, the young Turks; Thabo Mbeki and others the economic transformations to deal with it because they were exposed to those "First World countries" for long years and Mbeki was an economist himself, educated in the UK universities.

While all these transformations were taking place, Mandela had serious marital challenges at home to attend to. This time around he was pressurized to jettison his wife not only by the ANC but together with international corporate giants who never wanted Winnie Mandela and other few radical ANC members to be near the negotiations that would lead South Africa to true independence. It was evident too that the white South Africans were against anything related to the Freedom Charter of the ANC. The death of Comrade Thembisile Hani should be revisited because it has a lot to do with his firm stand to defend the Freedom Charter and his socialist make-up. He had said earlier before he left Zambia going to South Africa for the first time after a long exile, that the economic transformations will be informed by the aspirations of the Freedom Charter and not less. This stand may have led to his assassination by whomever.

As luck would have it, when the negotiations regarding economic transformation started, the Washing Consensus, the World Bank and IMF's so-called  impartial experts knocked at the doors of South Africa offering assistance to the unknowledgeable ANC Party promising all range of new policy tools such as one of Structural Adjustment Policies, curiously policies that failed dismally in other Africa countries. The ANC had initially rejected International Trade Agreements. The package was fed to ANC negotiators as the only way to transformation and running  the South African economy. The ANC was outsmarted not only by the Washington consensus but by the National Party as well. They came out as "lesser" negotiators in the whole processes.   

Mrs Winnie Mandela and some few ANC loyalists and supporters saw this danger, the negotiation was so secret and discreet, so many concessions were done and sealed without the knowledge of the general public. They were nowhere near the negotiating tables of economic turn-around just to advise and be part of this unbelievable revolution taking place in the country. Winnie Mandela's vision of South African independence was never to be compromised by the International institutions such as the Washington Consensus, the World Bank and IMF. The excitement for independence was so great that the ANC struggled to come up with general policies promised by the Freedom Charter: housing, free primary education etc. It was almost impossible to advise to turn around what was already agreed by the negotiating team.  

Alone making the Central Bank independent meant that it was going to resist and restrict any demands from the ANC to meet the people's aspirations of the Freedom Charter. The hands of the new dispensation were tight. There is no meaningful development that can truly be accomplished by any parliamentarians without access to the Central Bank. South Africans surely can never say they are independent. The South African economy is owned by international Institutions in Washing, London and Frankfurt. South Africa was never freed, according to Snyman: they took the chains from our necks and put them on our ankles"   ANC has come to term with accepting its restricted power and embraced the new dispensation. Winnie Mandela dies leaving a South Africa that is not free economically.  

There is a lot that ANC South Africa could have done during those economic independence negotiations: One of many ways was to make international corporate companies accountable for benefiting from the Apartheid regime. The international companies made trillions of profit using black labour. The example should have been drown from Germany that is still paying back all companies that benefited from the Nazi-era and together with the government of the Third Reich are till to date making reparations to Israel in billions a year. Why a blanket pardoning of corporate criminals?  Why pardoning heinous crimes of Apartheid and you cannot pardon a wife: Winnie Madikizela- Mandela and a mother of your own children? The ANC was no able put to table those crimes committed by those corporate international companies who benefited from Apartheid regime. Winnie Mandela was loathed by those international institutions for demanding true independence for South Africa: she wanted corporate companies punished and those funds were going to improve the lives of black peoples in South Africa. Israel today is a first world country because they get those remittances from the German government to build the State of Israel. Germany will pay billions until the end of this Millennium to Israel. But  of her radical feat she was one of those who was so radicalized by racist regime she even propagated "push the white man to the sea" Her torture, always subject to house arrest, kept under surveillance, was held in solitary confinement, banished to remote areas was fertile ground for radical Winnie Mandela hence the forces in the National Party and indeed the corporate-world never reconciled with Winnie Mandela. They influenced Nelson Mandela to separate with his radical wife as one of the conditions for proper political and economic negotiations.

Her beauty and eloquent intelligence, her embodiment of courage to bring true change in South Africa will stay with us for a long time. History will prove her right just one day. That altered democracy and poor service for the blacks still existing in South Africa; Winnie wanted a better one and never pseudo-independence. Reading the western press one could tell how the western world loathed our icon: Nomzamo Winnie Mandela for a reason. Hamba Kahle beautiful Queen of Africa. Ulale Kahle Ntombi enhle. You did your uttermost best to liberate the continent from political economic and emotional slavery. Your shoes are just too big, we cannot fit into them. But your spirit remains in us to emulate what we still can from you. We shall always remember you forever because you left an indelible mark in our lives. You leave South Africa a country of two worlds: the rich white and the poor blacks: the struggle you surrendered your life to free it, for all those years. You may have felt the pain on your last breath to leave South Africa in chains of poverty and destitution of the majority of black people. Your husband forgave heinous crimes against humanity but was not able to pardon you for those you may have committed during the Apartheid era. What is forgiveness then?