“Ms Naipaul is a liar and a fraud. I gave her no interview,” wrote Madikizela-Mandela (Winnie Mandela) in an article in the weekly Sunday Times here.
“(The article) is a figment of her malicious imagination,” Madikizela-Mandela wrote later in the article as she denied that Naipaul had interviewed her while on a visit to Mandela’s Soweto home with her husband and author V S Naipaul.
In the widely publicised article authored by Nadira Naipaul in the London Evening Standard, Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying that Nelson Mandela, her 92-year-old former husband, had let down the majority black citizens of South Africa by entering into a deal with the then white apartheid government.
“Mandela let us down. 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 was quoted as saying.
Madikizela-Mandela, who was married to South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela from 1958-1996, also allegedly told Naipaul that she would never forgive Mandela for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize along with then President FW de Klerk of the all-white minority ruling National Party. Madikizela-Mandela wrote that it was “disturbing” that the “Evening Standard” had not checked the interview with her, accusing local media of giving “a distant journalist and a paper known for its sensationalism the benefit of the doubt, and not me.”
“I will in the coming days deal with what I see as an inexplicable attempt to undermine the unity of my family, the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the high regard with which the name Mandela is held here and across the globe.” “I have already had the opportunity to speak to Bishop Tutu, who was also in Atlanta, USA where I addressed a meeting. I intend speaking with Madiba and Graca (her former husband and his wife), as I regularly do. I will also have to deal with the hurt caused to my children and grandchildren by the unwarranted and untrue statements about their private lives. I appreciate the fact that my organisation the ANC decided to hear my side before making any judgements.”