Submitted by Pachamama
There has never been a woman, across the histories of all times, who could have transfixed the imaginations of generations of men, and boys, as has Saint Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Her transition leaves armies of Her men with no choice but to traverse one billion lifetimes in an eternal quest for Her divine grace – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
Carrying the weight of the liberation struggle on Her shoulders, nearly alone and for decades, Saint Winnie bore the full brunt of the vicious Apartheid regime of South Africa with a fierce, unyielding, determination. Exiled in Her own country, imprisoned, tortured, kept under house arrest, denied work and ostracized abroad, Saint Winnie still emerged as the central personality fighting against White rule on the home front – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
And yes! There are those who would dare to find fault of Her. They would want to speak of Her ‘football club’ and the death of one youngster in spite of two court cases with no finding of culpability, and many more dying in Her sacred defense, in a state of imposed war. These White-minded coconuts conveniently forget that a hundred-year revolution was being fought against international White supremacy. That there were untold losses on all sides, predominantly innocent, Black South Africans, at the hands of the apartheid state and its global supporters. That Her protection units had to eliminate some agents of that state, operating within, is standard practice in both revolutionary movements and state craft. Only a certain typology of Bajan slave would call for a bloodless revolution in all circumstances. ‘How long shall they kill our ‘Prophetesses’, while we stand aside and look?’ – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
That Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and indeed all the young men and women of South Africa see Winnie as their Patron-Saint can only serve to push the ANC ‘leftwards’. In that location they will then have to deal with a radical land reform, also needed in Barbados, as just recently passed in parliament – for the repatriation of South African’s lands to its real owners – lands that were stolen over centuries. And this is rightness – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
It has been long clear that Saint Winnie was the real radical all along. While people like Nelson Mandela and the now President, Cyril Ramaphosa, opted to either appease racist international neoliberalism and maintain economic apartheid or personally benefit from a highly unjust system, themselves. In the case of Ramaphosa, he opted to become a billionaire, shedding the garbs of a fake trade unionism. Does he not remind you of Leroy Trotman? In Nelson’s case, he opted for personal freedom in exchange for the maintenance of economic apartheid. Nelson Mandela even won the praises of no less a person than COW Williams. A man who once joined Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in calling Nelson a ‘terrorist’, said that Farley Hill could not be named after him – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
Saint Winnie was no western type feminist. Long before western feminist discourses recognized the limits to the thinking of Foucault, Freud, and others, Saint Winnie knew that what the westerners were really lacking was a transgenerational feminine connection, not lesbianism. Not an irrational hatred of men. Not a postmodernist gender competitive environment everywhere. It’s the essence of what the American literary critic, academician, Camille Paglia, now likes to talk about. The critical connection of grandmother, mother, sister and granddaughter interaction and passing on traditional systems of social organization, a powerful sisterhood – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
We beg our greatest ancestors to receive, the first amongst equals, The Great Saint Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. We shall always remember you and forever sing your sweet praises. See you again, soon – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!
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