The world celebrates men. Men can be ambitious, they can work to liberate their countries, they can be revolutionaries, and lead people. No one is against that. The world applauds these men. But when women fight for the liberation of their countries, they are vilified; they are called all sorts of names. It’s as if the world suffers from selective amnesia. We have a woman who is at the same level as all the world revolutionaries, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. 

Just taking a look back at history, men, white supremacy, and patriarchy do not like strong women, and particularly strong black women. For instance, in the 1660s, white men described (and it can still be read in history books) the great Angolan warrior Queen Nzingha who fought for her people’s freedom and fought the Portuguese against slavery, as an angry, power-hungry, and over-sexed woman who would sleep with one new soldier every night, and have him killed the next morning. Such absurdity! Wouldn’t that diminish her troops, troops strongly needed to fight against the Portuguese?

Next, we have the great queen Taytu Betul, the queen without whom there would have been no Battle of Adwa, where Ethiopia defeated Italy, the first victory of an African nation on a European one. There again, European historians describe Queen Taytu Betul as a man-eater, a woman with a black heart, manipulative, hateful, and conniving.

In both cases, the truth is that they are afraid of the power of the Black woman; these historians vilify Black women. The patriarchal and white supremacy system hates Winnie Madikizela-Mandela because she fought like no other, like no man would have. She was strong, and brave, and a woman of principle. To them, she was a woman, she should have stayed home, and not joined and fought tirelessly for freedom. Even though she was cleared of the murder of Stompi, she is hated while Nelson Mandela is sanctified, but everybody forgets that Nelson Mandela was once the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe the armed branch of the ANC. We do not hate that fact, because we know that, that was what was needed at the time for the apartheid regime to fall. So why do people applaud Nelson Mandela, and honor him, while they hate Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who kept his name alive while he was in jail 27 years, and fought like not many human beings (not even him) would have fought? The world applauds him, because he is a man. The world should also celebrate her, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Stop the sexist history, the patriarchist history, the racist history. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is a world revolutionary, and should be applauded for her stance all those years, for her hard work, her determination, her principle, and her love of her people. She should be celebrated. Please do watch what EFF leader Julius Malema has to say about it.