7 of the most memorable Winnie Mandela quotes

Winnie Mandela was a fierce activist who spent decades campaigning the abolishment of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

She has spent time in prison, and was considered a more controversial figure than her former husband, Nelson Mandela, for her militant tactics.

Later in her life, she came to criticise the African National Congress (ANC).

Whether one loves her or hates her, she is an integral part of South Africa’s path to liberation.

Here are some of her most memorable quotes:

1. On how black people will gain freedom in South Africa.

With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we will liberate this country.

2. On the patriarchy.

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.

3. On how she met Nelson Mandela.

I would be picked up after work. Nelson, a fitness fanatic, was there in the car in gym attire. I was taken to the gym, to watch him sweat! That became the pattern of my life.

One moment, I was watching him. Then he would dash off to meetings, with just time to drop me off at the hostel. Even at that stage, life with him was a life without him

4. On what prison did to her.

The years of imprisonment hardened me.... Perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions wouldn't be blunted as they have been in my case.

When it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life, I no longer have the emotion of fear. 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.

 

5. On her feelings for 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 long for him all the time.

6. On her husband's imprisonment.

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!

7. On black solidarity.

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.

H/T BBC, Business Insider

More: 35 books that will change how you see the world

More: How the world's leaders would look if they were hipsters