CNN interviewed Winnie Maneda, divorced spouse of Nelson Mendela, today and made the woman who once advocated "necklaces" of burning tires for inadequately motivated revolutionaries in South Africa seem proper and almost prim. But another interview, in the U.K., printed in the Daily Mail, gives a truer sense of the woman and her poisoned perspective.
Invictus, the film starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, did not get much attention at the Oscars show last night, but it deserves to be listed in the pantheon of films of political redemption. Whereas Winnie's hatred pointed in one direction, the suffering and reflection of Nelson Mandela headed him--and South Africa--in another, and history was transformed. It is not perfect, but, still, it is one of the quiet, beautiful triumphs of our time.
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