Winnie Madikizela was sentenced to five years in jail on Friday after her conviction on dozens of fraud and theft charges.
She will serve eight months of her sentence in prison, after which she would be required to do community service, Magistrate Peet Johnson said in the Pretoria Regional Court. One year of the sentence is suspended for five years.
Madikizela-Mandela (68) was caught in a web of forged signatures, bogus employees and a non-existent funeral scheme. After her evidence was branded dishonest and her denials implausible, she was convicted on 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft.
In a statement issued afterwards, Madikizela-Mandela said she would resign as MP, as African National Congress Women’s League president, as member of the ANC’s national executive committee, and from attendant positions in the party.
”This I will do in the fullness of time,” she said.
Her co-accused, broker Addy Moolman, was sentenced to seven years in prison, of which two years were suspended for five years.
The court granted applications by Madikizela-Mandela and Moolman for leave to appeal against their conviction and sentence. Their bail was increased from R5 000 to R10 000 each.
”It is… responsible, pending the appeal process, that I free my political party to pursue the issues of governance which South Africa is entitled to accomplish,” she said in a statement handed out in the Pretoria Regional Court.
Madikizela-Mandela again received major support both inside and outside the court.
Just as her counsel, Ishmael Semenya, was about to argue in mitigation of sentence, a young man jumped up in the public gallery, shouting: ”You are the ANC, Mama! I’ll die next to Mama!”
While police were removing him, another followed suit, yelling: ”You are a casualty of the revolution… We’ll fight left, right and centre!”
Police also took him from the courtroom.
Earlier, the State had asked for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to be given a medium-term prison sentence for fraud and theft, but said the effect of imprisonment should be tempered.
The question should be asked whether society expected an elderly great-grandmother to be imprisoned, prosecutor Jan Ferreira told the Pretoria Regional Court.
The prosecution accepted her contribution to bring about a new political dispensation in South Africa.
”One should consider the hardship she had suffered and is still suffering. She has been banished, tortured and her husband was in prison,” Ferreira said.
”Unfortunately something went wrong somewhere. She started to act as if she was above the law. She showed no respect for institutions of the state, including parliament.”
Several streets around the Pretoria Regional Court were partially cordoned off following threats by the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) to do ”anything” in its power to keep its honorary president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela out of jail even if it meant burning the prison holding her.
On Thursday, Cosas called on pupils and students to go to Pretoria on Friday to show support for Madikizela-Mandela. Police said they were aware of the Cosas threat and had sufficient plans in place to deal with any incident.
The Pretoria regional court yesterday found South Africa’s anti-apartheid campaigner guilty of exploiting her position as head of the African National Congress’s women’s league to defraud a bank and dozens of ordinary people.
Supporters cried ”Viva Winnie” in the dank corridor outside No 1 court, and she raised a clenched fist, but that could not mask what was a devastating blow to the self-styled mother of the nation.
Opposition parties said it should end a political career that started four decades ago as a fairytale of the liberation struggle.
Johnson said the evidence against her was ”overwhelming” and it was ”completely improbable” that Madikizela-Mandela, who pleaded not guilty, did not know of the scam.
The fraud charges relate to loans from Saambou Bank and a brokerage firm, Imstud, for applicants who falsely claimed to be employees of the ANC women’s league. They presented the bank with letters with league letterheads and Madikizela-Mandela’s signature.
”She exactly knew that she signed letters that would enable people to get loans to which they were not entitled,” the magistrate said.
The theft charges related to deductions the league president is said to have made from each of the loan applicants’ bank accounts for a funeral policy which was not underwritten. Instead the money was used to pay one of Madikizela-Mandela’s employees.
In testimony, Madikizela-Mandela said the intention was philanthropic and that she had signed documents without checking them, not realising Moolman was a crook.
Wearing a cream jacket and skirt and a pearl necklace, she remained impassive when the verdict was announced to a packed courtroom. Ignoring questions from reporters, she was escorted by bodyguards past supporters — and a court cafe called Caught — to a waiting Mercedes-Benz.
The populist is loathed by President Thabo Mbeki, who famously knocked off her hat when she tried to kiss him at a rally, but retains strong support among grassroot activists.
Despite international shopping sprees and a taste for luxury, the former social worker engages with the poor and young, turning up at their funerals and weddings.
The Madikizela-Mandela is seen as a hot potato and several ANC members are relying on the court to deal with her decisively. Having received the sixth most votes in the election for the ANC’s 60-member executive committee, she seldom showed up at parliament.
A core of loyalists forgave her everything, including the adultery cited by Nelson Mandela in their 1995 divorce, and the 1991 conviction over the death of Stompie Seipei, a 14-year-old activist found near her Soweto home with his throat cut.
For that a six-year jail term was reduced on appeal to a fine, but for many the mother of the nation had become the ”mugger of the nation”.
Madikizela-Mandela has recently been embroiled in two legal battles and was recently found guilty of breaching Parliament’s code of conduct by failing to disclose her financial interests. Early this month she sought to challenge the public censure she faced as a result.
Senior members of the ANC’s NEC have been talking to Madikizela-Mandela over the past two years to ”prevent her from self-destructing”, said an NEC member. ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma and former NEC member Peter Mokaba, who was a close friend of hers, were among those who had tried to talk to her.
There is a sense in some ANC leadership circles, however, that these interventions came too late because her ”self-destructive” tendencies had developed too far.
”We should have provided her with more guidance on how to conduct herself and her affairs. To an extent the ANC leadership has failed,” said one ANC leader, who added that Madikizela-Mandela was nonetheless the cause of her own demise.
Another NEC member said: ”She is beyond being influenced and plays one member against the other — her usual style of brinkmanship.”
The ANC leadership’s ability to deal with her was constrained by her grassroots popularity, which has allowed her to flout organisational discipline and publicly differ from the official line.
Madikizela-Mandela never fails to draw the crowds, and her court appearances have been no exception, with people thronging outside court to cheer her.
Madikizela-Mandela father chose the name ”Winifred” because it sounded German, a people he respected for their diligence. Nomzamo, the first name by which few know her, means ”she who must endure trials”.
– Staff reporters, Sapa, Guardian Unlimited Â