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Winnie Mandela

Winnie Mandela has been known as the Mother of South Africa. She is more celebrated and reviled than any other black woman in the country. Born in a rural village in South Africa, she became the first black woman to qualify as a medical social worker. She met, married and had children with the lawyer Nelson Mandela who, four years later in 1964, was given a life sentence for sabotage.

Her life has been shaped by campaigning for his freedom and her own arrests and exiles. In this interview she describes how politics shaped her life from a young age and the devastating effect of introducing her daughters to their father for the first time once they turned sixteen.

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18 minutes

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