Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Lives: Black Women, African Media, and the Subaltern Counterpublics on Mama Winnie’s Legacy

Western patriarchal media criminalized Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in obituaries published on the day of her death. In response, the African National Congress (ANC), specifically the ANC Women’s League, contested the epistemic violence via the launch of their hashtag campaign #AllBlackWithADoek and #DoekFriday on April 6. And Madikizela-Mandela’s granddaughter, Princess Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, encouraged use of the hashtag #IAmWinnieMandela. African media outlets – especially South Africa’s mediascape – amplified the campaign on X. Appearing stylishly adorned in doeks (African headwraps), raised clenched fists, and indicating ‘she didn’t die, she multiplied,’ users collectively embodied her legacy and constructed a womanist subaltern counterpublic and an Africana Womanism 2.0. This study examines how Black South African women – spearheaded by the women of a ruling African political party and supported by women staff from African media outlets – used an American social media platform to resist the Western patriarchal news media’s attempt at epistemicide. This analysis draws on Nancy Fraser’s feminist subaltern counterpublic, Clenora Hudson-Weems’ Africana Womanism, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s theorization of decoloniality’s zones of non-being and epistemicide, and Judith Butler’s hierarchy of grief to explore how Black women assert a freedom fighter’s immortality by using social media in their quest for epistemic freedom.