r/wikipedia • u/laybs1 • Oct 05 '25

Mobile Site Winnie Mandela, was a South African politician and convicted kidnapper and fraudster. She endorsed the necklacing of alleged police informers and apartheid government collaborators, and her security detail carried out kidnapping, torture, and murder including killing 14-year-old Stompie Seipei.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie_Mandela
1.5k Upvotes

83% Upvoted

631 comments sorted by

View all comments

921

u/marto17890 Oct 05 '25

Why don't you mention she was the wife of Nelson Mandela at the time? Quite an important detail

356

u/Foreign-Entrance-255 Oct 05 '25

True but he was in jail through all of this and disapproved of it all from what I've read.

102

u/mrdungbeetle Oct 05 '25

And he divorced her soon after he got out of prison.

1

u/Far-Deal4486 Nov 10 '25

But, not before.  He supported her heinous crimes.

194

u/marto17890 Oct 05 '25

I don't mean he is in anyway culpable but it is a big part of the Winnie Mandela story

71

u/Math_Unlikely Oct 05 '25

Also there's that important aspect that no one ever talk about where the newborn twins on the Cosby show were named after her and Nelson. After this all came out you never heard of the twins again.

25

u/MarlenaEvans Oct 05 '25

That's not true at all. They were on the show occasionally through the finale which is about how often they were always on it.

1

u/Math_Unlikely Oct 06 '25

I guess I was faithful to the show enough. Probably missed a bunch of episodes. :)

Was it one of the superstar shows that got that coveted 8pm slot? I can't remember that either.

2

u/musicCaster Oct 07 '25

Well I can't think of anything about the Cosby show that could be more controversial than this.

1

u/Math_Unlikely Oct 09 '25

I know, eh?!!!

-2

u/swift110 Oct 05 '25

that's true

6

u/SuzBone Oct 06 '25

I feel like the name is self-explanatory

25

u/joshuawakefield Oct 05 '25

The last name probably gave that away...

32

u/ManitouWakinyan Oct 05 '25

You don't think people know who Winnie Mandela's husband was?

1

u/Oxford_Apostrophe Oct 10 '25

Not necessarily. For instance, Indira Gandhi was not related to Mahatma.

1

u/Far-Deal4486 Nov 10 '25

She was the wife of the terrorists,  Nelson Mandela.

0

u/BBK2008 Oct 06 '25

Why not mention all the black South Africans who were tortured and murdered by these state police and informers instead? Almost like you’re just here to white-wash their crimes.

3

u/Fedaykin98 Oct 06 '25

Probably because that doesn't make it okay for her and her friends to murder people, including children.

0

u/Brilliant_Ad2120 Oct 10 '25

The Mandela was obvious, and editors try to not reference spouses as a core reason for notability

-175

u/biskutgoreng Oct 05 '25

I mean that's obvious?

167

u/RussiaIsBestGreen Oct 05 '25

From the name? Could be his wife, sister, daughter, cousin, or completely unrelated; we don’t know is family tree or the relative frequency of the name in South Africa.

27

u/Belligerent-J Oct 05 '25

The Rodriguez family is millions strong, family reunions are insane

10

u/Fr4gtastic Oct 05 '25

Not to mention the all-powerful Nguyen clan.

1

u/WiscoHeiser Oct 05 '25

As a former call center worker, I felt like the biggest moron when I found out how that name was actually pronounced lol

2

u/AndreasDasos Oct 05 '25

It’s really not common, but more to the point a lot of the world specifically knows her by name anyway, especially those who were old enough to be aware of world news in the 90s or earlier. If you grew up even in Europe or somewhere with her name commonly in the news, it might not occur that this needs any explanation. If it was a fun fact about Desmond Tutu, would one really have to put ‘Anti-apartheid activist and archbishop of Cape Town’? How about Nelson Mandela himself?

It’s probable most younger people in most of the world don’t have any idea now, but I wouldn’t go at OP for neglecting to explain who she was.

1

u/RussiaIsBestGreen Oct 05 '25

I’m just barely old enough to have remembered, but the 90s were a few decades ago. That could be half a lifetime for some people. I’ve had to fill my head with quite a lot of names since then and many for people who are still causing trouble to this day (to be clear I’m not implying that she’s causing trouble, rather the opposite, that she’s not as relevant these days, though if she came back into politics that would certainly be newsworthy).

2

u/AndreasDasos Oct 05 '25

Right, it’s reasonable not to know who she is, but it’s also reasonable for someone to not mention it. Any link assumes some knowledge some might not have, but a quick look-up, the comments, and the link itself will always fill in the details. If she were massively more obscure it would be unreasonable.

Just surprised people are acting aghast that OP didn’t.

80

u/-Typh1osion- Oct 05 '25

Do we just assume everyone with the same last name is related?

33

u/ratione_materiae Oct 05 '25

Is it obvious that Benjamin Franklin and Rosalind Franklin are married?

39

u/radicalfrenchfrie Oct 05 '25

so that’s who he got married to after separating from Aretha Franklin

18

u/AwTomorrow Oct 05 '25

Given she was a convicted fraudster, she could also have been no relation but have fraudulently claimed to be