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Date: August 18, 2025 05:19AM
Did Nelson Mandela ever condemn necklacing?
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/winnie-mandela-endorsed-the-most-cruel-form-of-torture-300071"It is hard to think of a method of torture and killing more cruel than necklacing, which involve a tyre being placed around the neck of a victim and then set alight; the tyre stayed around the victim’s neck until he or she died.
"It was a method of murder used only by opponents of the South African government in the 1980s; for all its cruelty the apartheid regime never resorted to burning people alive.
"The victims of necklacing were mostly — if not invariably — black... Three quarters of those died in 1986 — the year the practice was supported in public by Winnie Mandela."
Her infamous words stated in public in front of a mass of adoring youth:-“Together, hand-in-hand with our sticks of matches, with our necklaces, we shall liberate this country."
Nelson Mandela obituary (Guardian newspaper, UK) :
“ . . . It has been long assumed that [Nelson] Mandela, in prison, would have strongly condemned necklacing. Indeed, it was reported, and widely believed, that after Winnie had raised the issue – in 1986, when she declared that South Africans would liberate themselves with matchboxes and tyres – her husband had summoned her to Pollsmoor prison, in Cape Town and reprimanded her for it. It has emerged, however, from a document that circulated among journalists and academics in South Africa, and which finally dribbled into print in 2005, that Mandela condoned his wife's statement. The document, the minutes of a meeting between Mandela, Winnie and Ayob inside Pollsmoor prison, said: "NM approved of WM's necklace speech. He said that it was a good thing as there has not been one black person who has attacked WM." ……”