With its opening shots dramatically sweeping over the sun-drenched plains accompanied by the lush sounds of a symphony orchestra you can be forgiven for thinking that you are about to see an African ‘Sound of Music’ rather than the tale of the poor tribeswoman who would end up marrying one on the most famous men of the last century.  This is the story of Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela who’s birth in 1936 greatly disappointed her school-teacher father who was hoping that his sixth child  would finally be the son he always wanted.  Young Winnie however turned out to be quite the tomboy and an avid learner too so by the time she won a scholarship to go study in the big city, her father had become really proud of her.

Winnie was a very serious young lady preferring to spend all her time studying and then working rather than socialising with colleagues and friends. Even before she met her future husband, she shocked everyone by turning down a chance to study in Boston so that she could become a Social Worker in the Township of Soweto instead. When she caught the eye of budding politician and activist Nelson Mandela she initially rebuffed his advances, and only gave in and started dating him when he showed how tenacious he could be.  By the time they married, Mandela was already being harassed and pursued by the South African authorities often on the most tenuous of charges. They tried to make life as impossible as they could for the couple and that included having Winnie fired from the job that she loved so much.

Mandela was arrested and tried with three other black leaders and narrowly escaping the death penalty is given a sentence of life imprisonment.  There is a wonderful slightly ridiculous scene in the movie which adds a touch of humor when Winnie enters the Courtroom for the Trial and is decked out in full national regalia topped off with an outrageous headdress.  It earns the rebuke of the judge, to whom a defiant Winnie replies that she has little rights as a black woman in this country, but she still has the right to decide what to wear!

With Mandela doing hard labour on Robbins Island, the Authorities turn their attention to Winnie who has taken over her husband’s mantle and become a leader of the Movement and something of a firebrand speaker. They jail her without charges and put her in solitary confinement for almost a year but when they fail to break one single part of her spirit and determination, they release her again.

When she is finally allowed to visit her husband in jail he is horrified by her appearance and screams ‘what have they done to you?’  To which she calmly replies ‘Made me stronger!’. 

Winnie is then banished to a remote township for some years, until the Government starts having some serious discussions with Mandela in prison about trying to find away out of the country’s political impasse, and so they allow her to return to Soweto. The township has radically changed since she was last there and now rival anti-apartheid gangs violently fight with each other resorting to the practice of necklacing (putting a tyre around a victims neck and setting it alight). When Winnie’s house is firebombed, one of her supporters creates a bodyguard posse for her using the cover of a football club to make them appear legitimate.  Before long the antics of the Mandela United Football Club become infamous and when she visits her husband in jail he demands to know why Winnie is condoning the actions of these thugs and asks if she is actually sleeping with their leader.  She doesn’t answer either questions.

This is possibly the weakest part of the story as there is no attempt to explain why this respected activist who had been known throughout the world as ‘the mother of the nation’ is suddenly standing by silently when those close to her are committing unspeakable acts of violence.  When one of her Club boys is murdered for being a suspected Police Informer, we are never sure how complicit Winnie was, although many years later at the Truth and Reconciliation hearings she is held ‘politically and morally accountable’ for all the gross violations in human rights by her Football Club.  

By the time a freed Mandela became the President of South Africa in 1994, he had been seperated from Winnie for over two years.  He knew that his position as Leader would have been untenable if he had remained linked to this woman who once had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but had turned out to both malevolent and dangerous.

This fascinating biopic with its overly-dramatic soundtrack that gives it such an old-fashioned feel ends way before Winnie does finally end up behind bars.  What lifts it higher than its somewhat cliched script may have deserved is the two central performances, particularly that of Jennifer Hudson as Winnie who proves that her Oscar was no fluke performance. Terrence Howard takes great pains to ensure that he sounds acts as much like Mandela as possible and strangely physically ages much quicker than Winnie on screen!

Mrs Winnie Mandela is a powerful and fascinating character and I know there is a lot more milage in her life story yet, and it will be interesting to see how this incomplete version compares with ‘Mandela : The Long Walk to Freedom’ that has just been released.

Out now on VOD & DVD.

★★★★★★★