Mandela’s ex-wife denies criticizing anti-apartheid icon in British newspaper interview

Mandela’s ex-wife denies criticizing iconic leader

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife denied Friday that she had sharply criticized the anti-apartheid icon in a British newspaper interview, saying the comments attributed to her had been fabricated.

The London Evening Standard had quoted Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as saying that her ex-husband had “let us down” and that she could not forgive him for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 alongside white president F.W. De Klerk.

“I will in the coming days deal with what I see as an inexplicable attempt to undermine the unity of my family, the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the high regard with which the name Mandela is held here and across the globe,” Madikizela-Mandela said in a statement distributed by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Madikizela-Mandela had been traveling abroad at the time the article was published earlier this week.

In the interview, Madikizela-Mandela also was quoted as accusing the current leadership of Mandela’s party of exploiting his image while sidelining him as a leader. And she was quoted calling Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu a “cretin.”

The published comments raised eyebrows in South Africa, while the governing African National Congress party had said it would wait to speak to Madikizela-Mandela before commenting.

The Evening Standard said the interview was conducted with Nadira Naipaul, wife of Nobel literature laureate V.S. Naipaul. In the Standard article, Nadira Naipaul said she and her husband were touring Africa when they met Madikizela-Mandela in her mansion in Soweto. They were in South Africa last year.

Madikizela-Mandela denied that she had given Nadira Naipaul an interview.

“It is therefore not necessary for me to respond in any detail to the contents of a fabricated interview,” she said in her statement.

Mandela, 91, is revered by blacks and whites in South Africa, but is not above criticism. The most common are complaints that he devoted too much time during his 1994-99 presidency to seeking reconciliation with whites and too little to uplifting blacks mired in poverty by apartheid.

At a forum last month marking the 20th anniversary of Mandela’s release from prison, Madikizela-Mandela said that Mandela was loved and recognized around the world for his fearlessness, and that he had emerged from prison still committed to revolution.

In recent years, Madikizela-Mandela has often joined Mandela and his third wife, former Mozambican first lady Graca Machel, at family gatherings.

Mandela accused Madikizela-Mandela, his second wife, of infidelity and the two divorced in 1996, six years after he walked free following 27 years in prison.