Winnie Mandela Makes Triumphal Return to Home
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Black activist Winnie Mandela returned home in triumph to the black township of Soweto today after the government ended 23 years of restrictions on her movements, called banning orders.
Such orders are used by the government to suppress dissent by restricting the activities and contacts of prominent opponents of apartheid.
Mandela, 50, the wife of jailed anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, returned to her four-room home in Johannesburg’s black township of 1.5 million people in the afternoon, embraced by neighbors and surrounded by schoolchildren.
Asked how she felt to be home, Mandela told reporters:
“It makes little difference, really, because I should never have been away from home in the first place. . . . It was my right to be at home.”
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