This Winnie Soars

THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, May 2011

JOBURG, 1998. Journalists, photographers and cameramen crowd outside the Johannesburg Central Methodist Church for the next round of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s hearings into atrocities committed under apartheid. Everyone is  scrambling for their close-up, the right angle, their soundbite as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of then-president Nelson Mandela, is set to testify about allegations that she was complicit in murder, torture and arson during the 1980s.