by Cathal Kelly

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of South African hero Nelson Mandela, has denied giving a newspaper interview in which she castigated her former husband for failing the country’s black majority. The paper that published the interview, London’s Evening Standard, has responded by quietly branding Madikizela-Mandela a liar.

“We cannot understand Winnie Mandela's denial of an event and conversation which clearly took place,” the Evening Standard said in a release Friday.

The furor started Monday when the Evening Standard published an interview with Madikizela-Mandela. The interviewer was Nadira Naipaul, the journalist wife of Nobel Prize laureate Sir V.S. Naipaul.

It included withering criticism of the anti-apartheid icon.

“Mandela let us down,” Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying. “He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white.’ It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.”

She also lashed out at Mandela for accepting a Nobel Peace Prize alongside his “jailer,” white South African leader F.W. de Klerk.

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