EFF to honour Winnie in Brandfort

The Economic Freedom Fighters will hold a memorial service for the late struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in Brandfort, Free State, where she was banished for eight years in 1977 by the apartheid regime.

The red berets’ event will be held on the same day as the national memorial service, April 11, set to take place at Orlando Stadium in Soweto, Johannesburg.

Brandfort is a fitting place for the ”revolutionary who carried aspirations of black communities on her shoulders,” the EFF said in a statement on Saturday.

In paying tribute to Madikizela-Mandela, EFF leader Julius Malema called leaders of the governing African National Congress “patriarchs” intimidated by her popularity and quest for the rights of the poor and oppressed black people.

Malema said the ANC should hang its head in shame after it “deserted” her when she was accused of killing teenage activist Stompie Seipei, and that she played no role in Seipei’s death.

Affectionately known as “mother of the nation”, Madikizela-Mandela came a long way since being banished to the little town of Brandfort outside Bloemfontein. In the worst years of apartheid she was repeatedly detained, jailed, and banished, and spent most of her married life without her then husband, former president Nelson Mandela.

But she survived – weathering a string of controversies that would have snuffed out the political career of a lesser person. She died, aged 81, at Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital on April 2.

Thousands of people are expected to convene at Soweto’s Orlando Stadium for her funeral on April 14. The national memorial service will be held at the same venue on April 11.

She will be buried at Fourways Memorial Park, north of Johannesburg, where her great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela was buried in 2010. Zenani was the granddaughter to the Mandelas’ second child Zinzi.

Zenani, aged 13, died in a car accident after attending the 2010 World Cup kick-off concert at Orlando Stadium.

– African News Agency (ANA)

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