Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who has died aged 81, kept alive the flame of her husband’s resistance to apartheid for much of the time he was in jail, but as Nelson Mandela became the world’s most revered elder statesman, his wife became an embarrassment.
After the world learned of the reign of terror inflicted on Soweto by her street thug enforcers the "Mandela United Football Club", her earlier soubriquet ‘Mother of the Nation’ was amended to ‘Mugger’.
In 1991 she received a jail sentence for her part in the kidnapping of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi who was found with his throat cut after being accused of being a police informer.
In 1995 she left her husband, South Africa’s first black president, with little option but to sack her from her cabinet job as corruption allegations emerged.
And in March 2013, nine months before Nelson Mandela died, Winnie used an interview with the London Evening Standard to accuse her ex-husband of letting down black South Africans.
It was all a far cry from the euphoric image of Winnie punching the air in a clenched fist salute as she walked hand-in-hand out of Cape Town's Victor Vester prison with her newly released husband on February 11 1990.
After she died peacefully on Monday following a long illness, the equivocal nature of her legacy was hinted at by some tributes which spoke of “a rage that sometimes burned too brightly”, and others which suggested she would only be granted the credit she deserved now she was dead.
If Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ended her life being regarded as part of the troublemaking fringe of South African politics, she spent much of it playing a central role in her country’s struggle against apartheid.
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