Oppressed colonized never die naturally
The African People’s Socialist Party is united with the African nation to mourn the passing away of Comrade Winnie Madikizela Mandela, a brave daughter of Africa venerated through the world for her role in standing up against white power in the settler colony of South Africa.
Her name reminds us of her association to Nelson Mandela, who she married when she was 22 years old, only to be brutally separated from him for 28 years, as a consequence of the arrest and sentencing for life by the settler colonialist state of her husband Nelson Mandela, just 5 years after their marriage.
Colonized peoples never die naturally, even when they live long lives like Winnie Mandela at the age of 81 years old. All freedom fighters who suffered in the hands of white oppressors, have had their health severely affected by years of incarceration, brutality and constant harassment.
“She survived more than 35 years of apartheid – surveillance, threats, harassment, arrest and imprisonment, 491 days in solitary confinement and eight years in exile (banning in white settler area). The methods of torture used against her included, according to one account, denying her sanitary products so that she was found, in detention, covered in her own menstrual blood.” (Afua Hirsch).
But all imperialist methods and schemes failed to break her and they never forgave her for surviving.
This is the settler state that poisoned and killed Robert Sobukwe, beat Steve Biko to death, lynched Solomon Mahlangu, carried out Sharpeville and Soweto massacres etc….
Africans around the globe mourn Winnie Madikizela Mandela for her unshakable resistance against apartheid
When all main organizations for national liberation were banned by the South Africa regime, when most of the significant leaders were imprisoned, forced into exile abroad or killed, Winnie stepped up to lead by example.
Her stature grew in the fire of struggle, her defiance and her leadership inspired Africans in all corners of the globe. she carried for the longest period of time, the weight of African resistance on her tender, steeled shoulders.
That is how she became the symbol of African resistance to white settler colonial oppression inside the country.
Her willingness to struggle on the ground helped to keep imprisoned Nelson Mandela and other prisoners in the limelight around the world.
She stood tall in her rejection of white rule. She represented the oppressed and martyred African women and sisters in the struggle for a new Africa where women will be equal leaders in society.
Her elegance and defiance has no comparison, whenever she clinched her fists for a black black power salute to the world.
She told white people that “I am not sorry,” she insisted. “I will never be sorry. I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything.”
This is the Winnie the African people loved.
She radicalized militant masses of African workers
Winnie Mandela was a product of the rise of a militant mass movement of African workers from the mid-seventies until the formal negotiated end of the apartheid regime.
It was this surge of workers struggle that gave significance to Winnie Mandela and other leaders at home, including those in prison or those in exile, too.
Although Winnie herself became radicalized through her own participation in the struggle where she was not spared police brutalities, torture and harassment, it was the fearless mass workers struggle that elevated her status and projected her as a fierce representative of the struggle of black people in South Africa.
The fear of Winnie Mandela was in reality the fear of the power of mobilized and the organized African working class. The slander of Winnie Mandela was a slander of the African working class. Her vilification by the white press was a vilification of African women.
Our white oppressors could not break her because she has a loyal African working class who always had her back.
She became feared by white oppressors because she believed in radicalized solution with radical means. A position that was not endorsed by the leadership of ANC, including Nelson Mandela. She used to say that the ANC over-negotiated.
She was not a controversial figure as it is claimed in the bourgeois press
Imperialist rulers around the world and their settler colonialists at home kept telling us how controversial Winnie Mandela was, while they keep quiet on settler rulers who committed crimes and all sorts of massacres against African people in South Africa and throughout the world.
They used the word controversial in a slick way to criminalize African resistance against colonial oppression, while protecting the crimes of the oppressors.
It is shameless attempt to criminalize the oppressed and defend the oppressors.
The reality is that Winnie contemplated the violent overthrow of white settlers, while the ANC leaders already decided on a negotiated settlement. ”We will liberate this country with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, (the practice of putting a tyre around a collaborator’s neck and setting it alight.”
This unnerved the ANC leaders and white imperialists, because the real big snitches were at the top of ANC itself.
To the satisfaction of white rulers and their negro allies inside the ANC, between 1991 and 1993, Winnie was prosecuted by the white settler colonial state, the same one that freed Nelson Mandela just a few years ago.
The belly crawling non-violent Desmond Tutu dragged her to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which absolves leaders of Apartheid regimes, such as Pieter Botha and Frederik de Klerk and grants them total immunities.
This is what Winnie Mandela thought of Desmond Tutu and his TRC: “I told him a few home truths,” she said. “I told him that he and his other like-minded cretins were only sitting here because of our struggle and because of the things I and people like me had done to get freedom.”
The fact that our land up to now is still owned by foreign white settlers is not controversial.
The fact that African labor is still underpriced and undervalued by anyone is not controversial.
The fact most of African workers live in township, shanty towns, or shacks, is not controversial.
The fact not a single white leader of the Apartheid regime spent a day in jail is not controversial.
The fact that this state of oppression and landlessness endured by African masses is presided over by a black management, organized around the ANC is more than controversial.
The white press is quiet on black leaders who manage for them South Africa today.
They called her controversial or hate figure because they hated the truth that she spoke on behalf of the African people.
The ANC needed her to keep the fire of resistance.
It is only when the deal was secured, that the fraudulent Truth and Reconciliation Committee was set up to protect white settler criminals, that it became permissible to keep freedom fighters in prison if they refused to take that shameful deal, or put Winnie on trial for actions she took in the name of African resistance for national liberation.
The white settler colonial state has no right to trial our Freedom Fighters
The 1991 trial of Winnie Mandela before the formal end of apartheid regime was used to legitimize an illegitimate neo-colonial settler state, which was created to punish Africans who dared to challenge the status quo and enforce settler colonial peace at our expense.
That trial was a message to white people of the world that South Africa was safe for white settlers and all those whose prosperity depended on exploitation of African resources and labor.
This trial was an intimidation of ANC members, particularly, the African working class base of ANC, that they will be punished if they challenged the ANC deal with imperialism in South Africa.
This trial served to show and convince the African working class that if they could put Winnie Mandela on trial, then the neocolonial South African settler state would be able to handle any one who would dare to challenge this system.
The purpose was to impose limitations on Winnie’s drive to question the ANC deal with our oppressors.
Winnie Mandela like any other leader of our struggle against colonialism, is answerable to oppressed black people not to white colonial court, which can only serve oppressors and their collaborators.
Comrade Winnie’s criticism of the ANC leadership reveals her awareness of the fact that the black Revolution was not completed
Many would wonder why she did not quit the ANC? In the absence of a viable alternative, many Africans feel that after spending all their lives supporting the ANC, to abandon the ANC now is to be disloyal to black people.
In face of colonialism in South Africa, Winnie Mandela was correct to say that we need to go back to the drawing board. The African People’s Socialist Party has summed up a long time ago, that short of revolution, African masses would never know peace or freedom.
The ANC-negotiated settlement served imperialist, white settlers and the African petty bourgeoisie.
She herself said “ Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary,” she told an Evening Standard interviewer, “But look what came out. Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks.”
The masses of the African working class are still landless and homeless; they suffer severe unemployment and police brutality. African labor and resources are still of owned and dominated by our white oppressors.
And our black power freedom fighters still remain in the prisons of the old apartheid regime.
Winnie Mandela and all those ANC’s members and all other disenchanted members of other organizations who wanted to continue revolution could not it do it inside the African National Congress, which was created for a negotiated compromise between the African petty bourgeoisie and white settlers.
A special type of organisation is required to move forward and complete the Azania revolution.
This organization is the African People’s Socialist Party of Occupied Azania, a member of the African Socialist International, a single organization, responsible for leading the single world wide African revolution.
Peoples tribute to Winnie is to complete the black revolution in Occupied Azania.
A definitive tribute to a freedom fighter is the continuation and development of the struggle until completion. This is what African People’s Socialist Party is doing. It is not an accident that the African People’s Socialist Party learned of the death of Winnie Mandela while touring South Africa in the process of building the Party there.
Comrade Winnie Mandela is no longer with us, but the question is how to advance the revolutionary struggle, how to complete the black revolution.
This has been answered a long time ago by Chairman Omali Yeshitela:
“We have to build the African Socialist International, a strategic tool of the united African working class to capture international black state power, in the pursuit of uniting and building the African nation.”
It is in pursuit of this mission that Chairman Omali met comrade Winnie Mandela in December 2002, before going on to attend the Congress of the Pan Africa Congress of Azania as its keynote speaker.
Long Live Comrade Winnie mandela
Complete the Black revolution in Azania.
Build the African People’s Socialist party
