Winnie Mandela in Dates

Source: AFP

1936

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

1955

Becomes the country’s first black social worker, working at Soweto’s Baragwanath hospital.

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

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.

2018

April 2 2018: Death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.