Washington DC – The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African Americans, celebrates the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. She was the modern equivalent of the bravest woman of the 21st century. No other woman suffered as much pain and indignity. She was isolated and separated from her husband for more than 20 years. Every woman admired Winnie Mandela when she fought for and achieved the release of her husband Nelson Mandela from Robins Island in South Africa. She was not only brave, but her beauty radiated all across Africa in the face of every African baby born during her time on this earth.
Rev. Anthony Evans, President of the National Black Church Initiative says, “I could have only imagined when I was a Sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont, as a part of the student movement across the country to force Colleges and Universities to divest their stocks and holdings out of South African companies and adopt the Sullivan Principles named after Rev. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, that I would take up the same torch some five years later in Washington, DC in front of the South African Embassy. I was arrested along with thousands of others during that protest. Even then I did not imagine that I would ever meet Nelson and Winnie Mandela or Oliver Tambo or Chris Horn or Bishop Tutu or Walter Sisulu and Roberta Sisulu and the many freedom fighters of South Africa. But I did meet them, and they thanked us, and I was able to live and witness how victory tastes when you crush evil like a system like apartheid.”
Winnie Mandela’s life gave courage and dignity to every African child born in South Africa and beyond. She was our modern African Queen Mother who set an example very few women would ever achieve no less men. Every woman would want to be known as the woman who fought for her freedom, her man and her nation and Winnie Mandela has done so.
She was the perfect flower of Africa, and she was only a simple example of what Africa can produce. NBCI strongly believes that the fertile soils of our African land will produce African women even greater than Winnie Mandela. The African soil, the best soil in any nation, the richest, will being forth in our lifetime and lifetimes to come, from its womb the likeness of African leadership the world has never seen. Winnie Mandela comes form a long litany of powerful, beautiful, strong and courageous African women and women of the diaspora.
If you were as lucky as our President of the National Black Church Initiative, Rev. Evans has been to have met Nelson and Winnie Mandela and be overwhelmed with emotions that only a man can feel, that day he saw what the labor of himself and millions of other African Americans can do.
We forced the most racist white regime in the history of South Africa to not only bend but break and to give up Nelson Mandela from the womb of that prison. When he walked out of that prison with his fist raised in the air, unbowed, unapologetic and as a strong African man, the world could not help but gleam at him and Winnie Mandela coming out victoriously over evil.
We won, we are winning and now Winnie has won her salvation in Christ as she joins the great saints of the Church until that final horn will blow that would awaken the righteousness of the dead.
