‘I fear nothing’: Winnie in her own words

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was a woman who didn't mince her words. Here are some of her most colourful quotes:

To those who oppose us, we say: ‘Strike the woman, and you strike the rock’  – 1966

TOGETHER, HAND IN HAND, WITH OUR MATCHES AND OUR NECKLACES, WE SHALL LIBERATE THIS COUNTRY  – 1986

I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy  – 1996

I will not allow the selfless efforts of my husband and his friends to be abandoned. I will continue the struggle for a free and equal South Africa – 1962

THEY THINK BECAUSE THEY HAVE PUT MY HUSBAND ON AN ISLAND THAT HE WILL BE FORGOTTEN. THEY ARE WRONG. THE HARDER THEY TRY TO SILENCE HIM, THE LOUDER I WILL BECOME  – 1962

There is no longer anything I can fear. There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn’t any pain I haven’t known  – 1987

It is only when all black groups join hands and speak with one voice that we shall be a bargaining force which will decide its own destiny  – 1976

ALL THAT WE FOUGHT FOR IS NOT WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW. IT IS A TRAGEDY THAT HE [MADIBA] LIVED AND SAW WHAT WAS HAPPENING. WE CANNOT PRETEND LIKE SOUTH AFRICA IS NOT IN CRISIS; OUR COUNTRY IS IN CRISIS AND ANYONE WHO CANNOT SEE THAT IS JUST BLUFFING THEMSELVES  – 2017

If you are to free yourselves, you must break the chains of oppression yourselves. Only then can we express our dignity. Only when we have liberated ourselves can we cooperate with other groups. Any acceptance of humiliation, indignity or insult is acceptance of inferiority  – 1976

ON NELSON MANDELA

I had so little time to love him. And that love has survived all these years of separation … perhaps if I’d had time to know him better, I might have found a lot of faults, but I only had time to love him and I long for him all the time 

ON WOMEN

The overwhelming majority of women accept patriarchy unquestioningly and even protect it, working out the resultant frustrations – not against men, but against themselves in their competition for men as sons, lovers and husbands.

Traditionally, the violated wife bides her time and off-loads her built-in aggression on her daughter-in-law. So, men dominate women through the agency of women themselves