From: vamg6792@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Vincent A Mazzarella)
Subject: UPS: Mandelas to separate
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 22:59:43 GMT


	JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (UPI) -- Nelson Mandela said Monday he is
separating from his wife Winnie after 33 years, but the president of the
anti-apartheid African National Congress said he still loves her and
urged the media to leave her alone.
	``In view of the tensions that have arisen owing to differences
between ourselves on a number of issues in recent months, we have
mutually agreed that separation would be best for each of us,'' Mandela
told a news conference in Johannesburg.
	``My love for her remains undiminished,'' Mandela read from a
prepared statement, his voice choked and emotional.
	``I part from my wife with no recriminations,'' the 73-year-old
Mandela said.
	His announcement followed two weeks of intense speculation in the
South African press about the state of the Mandelas' marriage, and a
series of press reports about Mrs. Mandela's alleged involvement in 1988
beatings and murders in Soweto.
	``There are forces in the ANC which recognize that Mrs. Mandela has
become a liability,'' the country's The Star newspaper commented on its
editorial page before the announcement.
	``The relationship between myself and my wife, Comrade Nomzano Winnie
Mandela, has become the subject of much media speculation. I am issuing
this statement to clarify the position and in the hope that it will
bring to an end further conjecture,'' an emotional Mandela told the news
conference at ANC headquarters.
	The Mandelas were widely reported not to have lived apart since last
fall after Mrs. Mamndela was cvonvicted as an accessory to assault last
July.
	She was also reported by South African media to have been having an
affair with one of her lawyers after the release of her husband from 27
years in South African jails in February 1990.
	Mandela said his marriage had not been a normal one because of his
time in jail and his life before that as a constant fugitive.
	``Comrade Nomzamo accepted the onerous burden of raising our children
on her own,'' he said. ``She endured the persecutions heaped upon her by
the government with exemplary fortitude and never wavered from her
commitment to the struggle for freedom,'' he said.
	Three of Mrs. Mandela's co-accused have made statements in the past
two weeks indicating her involvement in the 1988 kidnapping and beating
of four black youths in Soweto was not fully explored in her trial last
year.
	Her driver said Sunday he had lied about her whereabouts on the day
of the assault, Dec. 29, 1988, and alleged Mrs. Mandela had led an
attack on the four kidnapped youths, one of whom was later murdered by
her bodyguard.
	Mandela said he was not separating from his wife because of the
allegations.
	``My action was not prompted by the current allegations being made
against her in the media,'' he said. ``I deeply regret the role that the
media has assumed in this regard and would once again urge that the
issue of her guilt or innocence be left to the judicial system to
determine,'' he said.
	Mandela, clad in a gray suit, refused to take questions after reading
his statement.
	``Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you appreciate the pain I have gone
through,'' was all he would say.
	News of the split drew saddened comment from the Mandelas' long-
standing friend South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winner
Desmond Tutu.
	``I am deeply saddened,'' Tutu said from his Cape Town residence. 
``Their stand as a couple has meant an enormous amount to our struggle
and we are seeing the price that has had to be paid by many of those
committed to striving for a new South Africa,'' he said.
	``I just hope against hope that they will be albe to resolve their
differences so they can again be of mutual support to one another in the
next stage of the struggle,'' Tutu said.
	When Winnie first met Nelson Mandela in 1956, the 38-year-old
activist was awaiting trial for treason. He had to apply for special
permission to attend his own wedding, on June 14, 1958. He was
constantly out of town, or on the run, or under arrest. In 1963 he was
jailed for life.
	When Mandela was finally released after 27 years, in February 1990,
Winnie told reporters she estimated she had spent only four months of
her entire marriage in the same house as her husband. She had spent
nearly three decades campaigning for his release.
	Politically, Winnie's style was at marked odds with the non-violent
approach of her husband since his release.
	In 1986, she prompted wide media coverage when she seemed to endorse
``necklace'' murders, in which victims are burned to death with
gasoline-soaked tires around their necks.
	``Hand-in-hand, with our matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate
this country,'' she told a crowd in April that year.
	But it was the storm surrounding the 1988 beatings at the Mandela
house which appeared to have finally wrecked the marriage, which
producved two daughters.
	Justice Michael Stegmann last year sentenced Mrs. Mandela to five
years in jail for the kidnappings, and to one year as an accessory after
the fact to the beatings. Nelson Mandela said then he was standing by
his wife.

-- 
Vincent Mazzarella
College of Medicine, Neuroscience Program
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
e-mail:  mazz@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu  (Internet)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african,soc.culture.african.american,soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.asean,soc.culture.asian.american