Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is one of the most revered — and controversial — figures in South African history. To her grandchildren she was simply “Big Mommy.” Now two of them, Princess Swati Dlamini-Mandela and Princess Zaziwe Mandela-Manaway, probe that complicated legacy in a new Netflix documentary series, The Trials of Winnie Mandela, currently available only in Africa.
In the series trailer the sisters acknowledge the difficulty of their task: “How do you ask your grandmother, are you a murderer, are you a kidnapper?” They say they sought an unbiased portrait. “I’m so proud of this work, because it is not just a myopic view of a person that we love, but also who is complex, and has had a complex history,” Dlamini-Mandela, 47, says.
Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president and a global symbol after 27 years in prison. Winnie, who played a central role in the struggle while he was jailed, has long been both lionized and vilified. Critics accuse her of encouraging Black-on-Black violence in townships during the 1980s. A group of young men tied to her — the Mandela United Football Club — were implicated in vigilante abductions and killings of people suspected of being informers, including minors.
In 1997 Winnie appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Desmond Tutu. Pressed about those events she said, “Things went horribly wrong…for that I am deeply sorry.” The commission found her “politically and morally accountable” for crimes committed by members of her bodyguard group.
Filming on the Netflix series began before Winnie’s death in 2018 at age 81, so she is able to respond directly in interviews. The granddaughters contrast the way the family depicts Nelson as a saint while Winnie has often been cast as a sinner. When asked about that dichotomy, she replied that whether one is saint or sinner is between her and God.
Winnie’s commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle came at heavy personal cost. With Nelson imprisoned, she raised their children and continued his activism, becoming a persistent target of the apartheid state. In 1969 she endured 491 days in solitary confinement and was tortured; she later described the experience as leaving irreversible scars. She was jailed repeatedly, had her Soweto home raided, and was banished to the remote town of Brandfort in an effort to blunt her influence.
Her militancy attracted criticism, even inside the African National Congress. A 1986 speech appeared to condone “necklacing,” a brutal practice in which a tyre was forced onto a person’s chest and set alight, used to punish alleged collaborators. She was also the subject of intense scrutiny and vilification over alleged romantic affairs while her husband was imprisoned. After Nelson Mandela’s release their marriage deteriorated and they divorced in 1996, a breakup for which she bore much of the blame in public discourse.
In recent years a younger generation of South Africans has begun reassessing Winnie’s place in history through a feminist lens. Momo Matsunyane, who directed the Johannesburg play The Cry of Winnie Mandela, argues that a male comrade would not have been subjected to the same personal attacks and that accusations about an affair were used to vilify her. Matsunyane says it’s possible to hold both truths: Winnie may have been involved in ruthless acts, but she was also fiercely resilient against a violent, inhumane system and repeatedly put her life on the line for freedom.
Winnie’s public rehabilitation is visible: thousands mourned her death outside her home in 2018, her image appears on T-shirts and murals, and a major Johannesburg road bears her name. The hashtag #SheDidn’tDieSheMultiplied trended among young South Africans affirming her continuing influence. “There are a lot of young women who identify with the spirit of Mama Winnie,” Matsunyane says.
For her granddaughters, memories of Winnie are intimate and ordinary: Sunday cooking, hugs, advice, and warm family moments. They recall a childhood in which the family’s global fame was not fully understood. “We were kids, so we didn’t realize that we were Nelson and Winnie’s grandchildren,” Mandela-Manaway says. Their mother, Zenani, tried to normalize their upbringing, but public association carried costs; for a time, the sisters say, few wanted to be linked to them.
The documentary aims to hold those tensions: the public record of violence and accountability, the state repression she endured, and the private role she played as a grandmother and mother. By foregrounding interviews with family and reexamining archival evidence, the series seeks to complicate the familiar narratives about Winnie Madikizela-Mandela — neither absolving nor condemning, but trying to understand a life lived at the center of a brutal struggle.