It may come as a surprise that despite her outsized influence on twentieth century South African politics and within the African diaspora, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has not received much attention from historians. She has rather been the subject of biographies by journalists and political friends (Nancy Harrison in 1985; Emma Gilbey in 1993; Anné Marié du Preez Bezdrob in 2003; critiqued here and here), fiction (Njabulo Ndebele, 2003), documentary and dramatic film (Peter Davis, 1986; Darrell Roodt, 2011; and, most recently, Pascale Lamche, 2017), and even a 2011 opera. These must be considered in the historical-political context in which they were created, and the sources upon which they rely must be carefully interpreted. Especially as Madikizela-Mandela was the subject of intense scrutiny and misinformation in the years of Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment and beyond.

Many of her chroniclers failed to consult Madikizela-Mandela, or to foreground her own words—a disrespect that she protested. The apartheid state, political activists, and commentators all projected upon her images ranging from Mother of the Nation or Penelope, to fallen woman or Lady Macbeth.

Why have depictions of Madikizela-Mandela been so limited? It is true that in the face of interrogation, state-sponsored media that sought to vilify her, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Madikizela-Mandela chose what historian Ntombizikhona Valela describes as a “deliberate silence,” as a weapon of resistance.

Charting her political life has been challenging, because of the contingent nature of Madikizela-Mandela’s archive. She has no collection of personal papers that historians can access. In this respect, she is similar to other activist women: almost no black women activists have prominent collections of papers in South African archives (Phyllis Naidoo, an underground anti-apartheid activist, lawyer, and teacher from Kwazulu-Natal, is an important exception). The dangers of keeping personal papers in a time of incredible surveillance contributes to this, certainly, but the collections of Nelson Mandela, O.R. Tambo, Yusuf Dadoo, Ronnie Kasrils, Ruth First, Helen Joseph, and Hilda Bernstein are just a few that historians can access to examine the lives of activists and the larger anti-apartheid struggle. Even in the post-apartheid context when we might expect Madikizela-Mandela to elaborate upon her life, she deflected to others as she did when she recalled her underground work helping cadres infiltrate South Africa: “These are people who are generals in the South African army today who hold the highest offices in government but they must tell that story themselves” (Madikizela-Mandela, 2013). To a far greater extent than most activist women, however, Madikizela-Mandela has also left a rich public record of speaking for herself—in spite of surveillance and successive banning orders.

Still, talking about herself often meant talking about her husband—in part because of her conscious decision to ensure Mandela remained in the public eye. Her 1985 memoirs, aimed at an international solidarity movement, were called Part of My Soul Went with Him; when her prison diaries from 1969-1970 were published as 491 Days (Madikizela-Mandela, 2013), they were compiled with much correspondence from and to Nelson Mandela. And of course, as Madikizela-Mandela became the face of township political violence, Mandela became the face of reconciliation.

Interpretations of her life have thus inevitably become statements about the contributions and limitations of her (ex-)husband. For instance, Njabulo Ndebele’s fictional conversation between four women-in-waiting and Madikizela-Mandela, The Cry of Winnie Mandela, sensitively characterizes her as the subject of constant public attention, but also makes her an icon of waiting for a heroic man. In contrast, Pascale Lamche’s documentary, which includes extensive interviews with Madikizela-Mandela, “places the foibles and insecurities of men firmly at its center.” Madikizela-Mandela represents the possibilities for radical transformation that were lost during the male-dominated negotiated transition.

Feminist scholars have begun to explore Madikizela-Mandela’s challenging public archive, to highlight her as an activist and intellectual in her own right. In articles and MA theses, historians—most notably, Ntombizikhona Valela, Emily Bridger, and Helena Pohlandt-McCormick—have examined how Madikizela-Mandela adroitly crafted her public image to push the anti-apartheid movement toward greater militancy. Similarly, in the wake of her passing, political scientist Shireen Hassim, historian Vashna Jagarnath, and journalist Sisonke Msimang have all highlighted the complexity of Madikizela-Mandela’s politics, and their roots in her personal history. We can’t wait for Msimang’s new book, The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela, forthcoming in October 2018.

Since both Winnie and Nelson have passed, they have both been too easily caricatured—respectively emblematizing violence vs. peace, or the revolutionary spirit of the masses vs. the compromises of their leaders. Historians have already presented ample corrections to this simplistic narrative of Nelson Mandela: historiographic debates thrive, as new revelations of his complexities continue to unfold. Historians mostly need to work on extending these debates more fully into public discourse.

Yet Madikizela-Mandela’s life remains sketchily treated in standard histories of South Africa. Robert Ross’ A Concise History of South Africa (2003) mentions her on only one page: discussing the late 1980s, when “her personal rule in part of Soweto had turned murderous” (175). Other familiar classroom textbooks give her slightly more space, but only depict her from the 1970s on, as Mandela’s wife-turned-militant (Beinart, 2001; Ross, Mager, and Nasson, eds., 2011; MacKinnon, 2012; Dubow, 2014).

Here, we aim to present a more complex narrative of the whole arc of Madikizela-Mandela’s activist life, drawing on recent historical scholarship. This narrative is intended for a broad public audience, which feminist histories reach too rarely, both in South Africa and in the United States, where we teach. She knew this failure well, lamenting that Fatima Meer had not received the recognition she deserved because “ours is still a patriarchal society, in which men are more recognized than women. I hope that we will correct that situation with all our might as women.” She was certainly talking about more than just Meer’s history and legacy.

The archive Madikizela-Mandela has left behind has been defined by her role in two families: first, in the proud anti-colonial family into which she was born, and then in the First Family of the anti-apartheid movement. In these families, she had a sharp sense that she was a historical subject, in both senses of the word. From childhood, she saw herself as inheriting a political mission, subject to the unfinished historical struggles of her ancestors; in adulthood, she saw herself as a protagonist, bringing a new South Africa into being. Her life was violent because her formation as an historical subject was violent. Through Madikizela-Mandela’s life, we therefore see the complex ways that structural and political violence were deeply personal, and gendered.