Key Dates In The Life Of Winnie Mandela, Who Died At 81

That the ex-wife of former South African President and anti-apartheid warrior, Nelson Mandela, Winnie is dead is no longer news but we unraveled her life and the important dates during her life time.

– 1936: Born on September 26 as Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela in the Eastern Cape province.

– 1955: Becomes the country’s first black social worker in a hospital in Johannesburg’s Soweto township.

– 1958: Marries Nelson Mandela, a lawyer and leading member of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC).

– 1962: Mandela is jailed. Over the next years, Madikizela-Mandela emerges as an influential ANC figure, enduring harassment and stints in prison.

– 1986: In her most controversial speech, she endorses the practice of “necklacing” or burning people by setting alight a tyre around their necks.

– 1990: Nelson Mandela is freed after 27 years in prison.

– 1991: Madikizela-Mandela is found guilty and fined for the kidnapping of four Soweto youths and the killing of one by her team of bodyguards known as the “Mandela United Football Club”.

– 1992: She is forced out of all executive positions in the ANC after allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

– 1994: Appointed deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology in Mandela’s unity government. The next year, she is sacked for insubordination but keeps her position as member of parliament and head of the powerful Women’s League.

– 1996: Is divorced from Mandela, after four years of separation.

– 1998: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission implicates her in torture, murder and abduction during the struggle against apartheid.

– 2003-2004: Convicted of fraud, with a suspended jail sentence.

– 2009: Manages to secure only the fifth place on the ANC’s electoral list for the 2009 general election.

– 2013: Death of Nelson Mandela

– April 2 2018: Death of Winnie Mandela

Credit: The Punch