Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Research Articles

Embodied Discordance: Vernacular Idioms in Winnie: The Opera

ABSTRACTThe opera of black America and opera Indigene of settler-invaded continents initiated a trend in opera criticism that introduces new insights into the role of this classical genre in modern times. The treatment of black and indigenes operatic subjects in all of these operas signals that operas inevitably draw on historicities and other contemporary social variables in explaining the personal or national country's unfolding narratives. In both the black American tradition and opera of the indigenous people, grammars and vocabularies which share continuities with the indigenous world and further speak to complex intricacies of contemporary life, feature significantly. Profound in these registers are congealed indigenous or emerging idioms and vernaculars embodied as texts which function as signifying practices in the operas. A similar stylistic is noticeable in a South African opera by Ndodana-Breen, Vundla and Wilensky's Winnie (2011). This opera not only draws on these isiXhosa-coded oral texts but further juxtaposes them to the western world to play on the tensions and contrasting worldviews embedded in them. The plurality of consciousnesses refracted by the unstable interaction of the co-existence of these worlds brought about by these languages as well as the status of the latter in the South African linguistic terrain invites a reading that foregrounds polyphony, dialogism and dialecticism. The cultural scripts suggested by isiXhosa disrupt the autonomy of interpreting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's political image which owing to the nature of South Africa's media politics has been the preserve of the dominant language worldview. This discussion investigates these hidden scripts and draws from tenets of Brecht's dialectical theatre by demonstrating (a) the extent to which they upset dominant iconographies of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela; and (b) how the typology of her iconisation is located and historicised within the context of the time that shaped it. This makes her iconisation to be a commentary on issues of justice both before and after 1994.

Winnie: The Opera and Embodying South African Opera

Full of grand highs and lows, there's no denying that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's life experiences lend themselves to drama.1Winnie is perfect opera material.2Across a few days from 28 April to 3 M...

Winnie, Opera, and South African Artistic Nationhood

ABSTRACTPositioned within a nexus of themes in early 21st-century South Africa, Winnie: The Opera reflects the nation's desire to re-define itself artistically after its brutal colonial and apartheid history. Through the subject matter of a living controversial woman in politics (Winnie Madikizela-Mandela), the use of English and isiXhosa languages along with video excerpts from the South African Broadcasting Corporation coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and a musical language that includes traditional African music integrated with a western European operatic style, the opera brings together modern sensibilities that help express who South Africa is in the early millennium. In an analysis that positions Winnie in dialogue with traditional western European opera, this article also looks to opera in the United States a model for how stories about politics, race and ethnicity, and controversy are well borne out in opera as a genre. By highlighting the TRC in the beginning and finale, Winnie: The Opera presents new opportunities for South Africa and the world to deal with a horrendous past that wraps gender, politics, and nation together.

“The Consummate Material Girl?”

This paper examines one facet of the media persona of high profile South African liberation struggle figure, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: how English-language media represented her conspicuous consumption during a monumental decade in the country's history, the 1990s. In the framework of theories of post-coloniality and intersectionality, the paper analyses the discourses in a corpus of thematically coherent media texts featuring Winnie's lifestyle and consumption practices. Media narratives of Winnie's taste for “diamonds,” “champagne,” “mansions,” and “expensive clothes” are deconstructed as ideologically loaded and influenced by racialized and gendered power struggles. The extent to which Winnie is presented as having “sold out” on the liberation struggle and having “bought in” to neoliberal values is theorized in the context of the politics of wealth and poverty in a newly liberated society.

Narrative Time and the Space of the Image: The Truth of the Lie in Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's Testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The article begins by examining the relationship between truth and reconciliation as propounded by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It contrasts a linear conception of this relationship with an iterative conception and equates these conceptions with the narrative and the image,respectively. The article then proceeds to explore the implications of the image, or the imaginary, as the “other” of the TRC narrative. It argues that the distinction between narrative and image in respect to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's testimony makes possible an understanding of her evasions as lies that reveal a different kind of truth from the one the TRC had expected to uncover.

Restoring the Soul of the Nation

In response to the growing concern around the decay of the social and moral condition of South Africa by people and organisations of various backgrounds and persuasions, the Restoring the Soul of the Nation Initiative was launched in October 1997. The Initiative was men-centred and men-driven. A call went out for men to unite in rejecting and condemning brutality against women and children as well as to address other social ills sweeping through the country. It was acknowledged that men were also victims of many forms of violence. There was a general consensus that South Africa's sense of morality had begun to diminish rapidly. There was the perception that it would become impossible to bring crime under control. The important task of rebuilding the moral fibre of the nation required that we try to draw in the participation of as many people as possible from various disciplines, persuasions, affiliations and backgrounds. Emphasis was laid on ethics and a sense of responsible citizenship especially as men on their part, have been mainly generalised as the doers of the identified crimes against society: murder, rape, child molestation, child abuse, vehicle hi-jackings, theft, robberies, drug trafficking and other crimes that threaten the dreams of our nation. In a society where discrimination and prejudice based on race and gender, among others, have been dominant, it is important that the Initiative, a call exclusively to men and boy-children is well understood. Consultations, which have included women's organisations and women leaders were conducted on the scope and approach of such a men's movement. Among those who have given their support to the Initiative is the president of the African National Congress Women's League, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Zanele Mbeki of the Women's Development Bank. We also met with leaders from the National Women's Coalition, Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (ADAPT), and a range of organisations which focus on crime against women and children. Partnership with women The Initiative received enthusiastic support from women's organisations which also called for the following to be acknowledged: * that the restoration of the soul of the nation had to be done in partnership with women; * that the initiative, which focuses on assisting men to assume responsibility for the deteriorating societal fabric, must also address the impact of the historical traumatic experiences of men these experiences in turn have an adverse impact on the relationships between men and women; * that the timeousness of the Initiative which fills the critical vacuum in the efforts and struggles towards gender equality deserves to be encouraged and supported; * that the contributions that women have made towards influencing the behaviour of men and boys should not be disregarded. The women proposed that the Initiative focus on building caring and enabling comIN BRIEF

Comment

Comment Loren Kruger We all know where South Africa is, but we do not yet know what it is. —Albie Sachs This statement by Albie Sachs—former anti-apartheid activist, Constitutional Court judge, and most recently chair of the commission setting up a National Arts Council in South Africa—was first uttered at a meeting of the African National Congress in exile in 1989, but it is still apt today. The unifying energy of the anti-apartheid struggle has dissipated under the pressure of daily life and mundane politics. Without the binding force of a common enemy, discrepancies in economic and social conditions, as well as cultural conflict, are too powerful to permit easy appeals to a united national culture. In particular, the moral conviction that sustained several generations of theatre activists and cultural workers since the 1930s and that culminated in such memorable political theatre events as Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972), Woza Albert (1981), and Born in the RSA (1985) has given way to a variety of not-quite-compatible political persuasions and cultural practices. “Blessed with a perfect confusion,” in the words of one character in Sophiatown (1986), the play that dramatized that township’s urban and intercultural legacy, theatre in South Africa is now more diverse but also more conflicted. The provocative image on our cover, for instance, would have been unthinkable in the days of struggle. Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys’s appearance as Winnie Madikizela Mandela draped in a Nelson Mandela T-shirt does not simply present the spectacle of an “Afrikaner-Jewish drag queen” impersonating the woman known as “mother of the nation” (at least until she was dismissed from the Cabinet). Its hybridity also challenges South African audiences and performers to think skeptically about national icons and founding fictions when competing appeals for national, regional, and ethnic affiliation continue to echo across the country. The articles in this special issue on “Performing (in) South Africa,” take readers beyond (and before) the vivid and familiar images of anti-apartheid theatre to critical investigations of other performances with national aspirations, past and present. Most of the authors are practitioners as well as critics; all are based in South Africa. Researchers on the ground are in a unique position to map uncharted terrain and to open up new perspectives on well-trodden areas. In “Masques, Monuments, and Masons,” Peter Merrington draws on the theoretical work of Benedict Anderson and Jean-François Lyotard to analyze the South African Pageant of Union in 1910, and the local drama of the enmity and reconciliation of the “white races,” Boer and Briton, against the international backdrop of Masonic ritual and British imperial iconography from Canada to the Antipodes. Complementing Merrington’s historical investigation of the invention and performance of national tradition in a partially postcolonial South Africa is Jacqueline Maingard’s essay, “Imag(in)ing the Nation.” Her account of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Rugby World Cup, hosted by South Africa in 1995, shows the remarkable continuity of motifs and format between this “postapartheid” celebration of the “rainbow nation” and the pageants celebrating Union (1910) and the Tricentenary of Jan van Riebeeck’s landing at the Cape at the height of the apartheid era (1952). Taken together, these essays illuminate the unacknowledged legacy of South Africa’s conflicting pasts as well as the remarkable achievements of the present and so remind us of the difficulty as well as the necessity of coming to terms with those pasts in the present. Hazel Barnes’s essay, “Theatre for Reconciliation” directly addresses the roles that theatre and ritual may play in working through the past in the present. Her account of her production of Desire, a play by anthropologist David Lan about reconciliation in the wake of the Zimbabwean struggle for independence, draws on Victor Turner’s reflections on social drama as well as the interaction of student actors and spectators from different backgrounds. She shows how the performance and reception of conflict and redress in the theatre might foster the kind of thought and feeling necessary for reconciliation, while acknowledging that the translation of theatrical into social action is a difficult and delicate operation, especially in strife-torn...