Winnie Mandela Dead At 81 After Battle With illness in Hospital

WINNIE Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela has died aged 81 after a remarkable life in the spotlight marked by brutal controversy.

South African anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has died aged 81, her family have confirmed.

“She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones,” the family said in a statement.

The ex-wife of Nelson Mandela was known as “mother of the nation” and had been admitted to hospital in January with a kidney infection.

Her family said she “kept the memory of her imprisoned husband Nelson Mandela alive during his years on Robben Island and helped give the struggle for justice in South Africa one its most recognisable faces.”

News of her death comes on the day the US marks 50 years since the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King — who her former husband paid tribute to while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

The young activist met Nelson Mandela at a bus stop in Soweto when she was 22 in 1957 and the pair married a year later. Their romance lasted 38 years that was largely spent apart, with Nelson imprisoned for 27 years, leaving Winnie to raise two daughters and keep his political dream alive.

In 1990 the world watched when Nelson Mandela finally walked out of prison — hand-in-hand with Winnie.

But they separated just two years later and divorced in 1996 after a legal wrangle that revealed her affair with a young bodyguard and she went on to become embroiled in several major controversies.

South Africa's Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who is popularly known as "the mother of the nation" was admitted to hospital in January. Picture: AFP PHOTO / MUJAHID SAFODIENSource:AFP

With or without Nelson, who died in 2013, Winnie built her own role as a tough, glamorous and outspoken black activist with a loyal grassroots following in the segregated townships.

“From every situation I have found myself in, you can read the political heat in the country,” she said in a biography.

Winnie was born September 26, 1936, in the village of Mbongweni in what is now Eastern Cape.

She completed university, a rarity for black women at the time, and became the first qualified social worker at Johannesburg’s Baragwanath Hospital.

It was her political awakening, especially her research work in Alexandra township on infant mortality, which found 10 deaths in every 1,000 births.

“I started to realise the abject poverty under which most people were forced to live, the appalling conditions created by the inequalities of the system,” she said.