Winnie Mandela’s Death A Huge Loss To Africa – Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari says the passing away of South-African anti-apartheid icon, Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, is a huge loss to Africa.

The President in a statement via the Official handle of the Presidency @NGRPresident, described the ex-wife to former South African President, Nelson Mandela, as a courageous woman.

President @MBuhari has described the passing away of South-African anti-apartheid icon, Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as a huge loss to Africa, of a courageous woman.

— Presidency Nigeria (@NGRPresident) April 2, 2018

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died peacefully on Monday at the age of 81 after protracted illness, a family spokesman said.

The long illness that had kept her in and out of hospital since the start of the year, Victor Dlamini said in a statement.

“She fought valiantly against the apartheid state and sacrificed her life for the freedom of the country,” the statement said.

“She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones.”

In her twilight years, Madikizela-Mandela, had frequent run-ins with authority that further undermined her reputation as a fighter against the white-minority regime that ran Africa’s most advanced economy from 1948 to 1994.

During her husband’s 27-year incarceration, Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for his release and for the rights of black South Africans, suffering years of detention, banishment and arrest by the white authorities.

She remained steadfast and unbowed throughout, emerging to punch the air triumphantly in the clenched-fist salute of black power as she walked hand-in-hand with Mandela out of Cape Town’s Victor Vester prison on Feb. 11, 1990.

For husband and wife, it was a crowning moment that led four years later to the end of centuries of white domination when Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.