Not long before she died, Winnie Mandela (pictured in 1990) was busy doing what she had spent much of her life doing: trying to make cash out of her famous surname

Not long before she died, Winnie Mandela was busy doing what she had spent much of her life doing: trying to make cash out of her famous surname.

The self-styled ‘Mother of the Nation’ had been involved in a bitter legal battle for control of a house owned by the late Nelson Mandela — even though Winnie herself had never lived there, and by the time of the former President of South Africa’s death in 2013, they had been divorced for 17 years.

But that was Winnie: always greedy and always grasping.

The spokesman who announced her death yesterday, aged 81 after a long illness, said that she had ‘succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon, surrounded by her family and loved ones’.

The truth — despite TV footage of grieving crowds and adoring profiles by white Left-wing commentators — is that many in South Africa will not mourn her passing.

One should not speak ill of the dead, but I shall make an exception. Winnie Mandela was an odious, toxic individual who continued to preach hatred rather than reconciliation right up to the end of her life.

She was an enthusiastic supporter of new laws to seize white-owned land without compensation — a move that could trigger the economic collapse of the country.

Born in the rural Eastern Cape, Winnie rose to fame on the coattails of Nelson Mandela and clung on to them relentlessly, long after he had seen her for what she had become.

They met while he was married to Evelyn, his first wife with whom he had two children. A former boxer, notorious for his roving eye, Mandela had spotted the ‘strikingly beautiful woman’ at a bus stop in the black township of Soweto.

This was Winnie Madizikela, then 22 years old. The following week they met for lunch — and so their affair began.

Yet for all her beauty, Winnie was a disturbed individual. From an early age she was troubled by the fact that her mother was half-white, believing that her blood had somehow become ‘polluted’.

According to her biographer, Emma Gilbey, Winnie’s mother was hated by some of her own family on account of her pale skin, blue eyes and red hair. ‘Her childhood was a blistering inferno of racial hatred,’ says Gilbey.

Winnie and Nelson married in 1958 and lived in Soweto, the South African township that became synonymous with opposition to white rule. They had two daughters before Mandela was jailed briefly in 1960 for his opposition to apartheid.

Born in the rural Eastern Cape, Winnie rose to fame on the coattails of Nelson Mandela and clung on to them relentlessly, long after he had seen her for what she had become

In 1962 he was arrested, along with other leaders of the banned African National Congress at their hideout at a farm in a Johannesburg suburb. At the famous Rivonia Trial in 1963/64, he was found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the South African state by sabotage and jailed for life.

It was during his imprisonment on Robben Island that his young wife became a global figure in her own right.

She was a high-profile opponent of apartheid, infamously calling for black South Africans to liberate their country with ‘matches and their necklaces’ — tyres filled with petrol and set ablaze round the necks of her enemies. She also developed a fondness for cheap brandy and spent much of her time hopelessly drunk.

Repeatedly arrested for her role in township uprisings, in 1977 she was placed under house arrest and then banished to a remote town, where she was constantly harassed by the government’s security apparatus.

Eventually, in 1986, she was allowed to return to Johannesburg, where she was portrayed to the world by the African National Congress (ANC) propaganda machine as a heroic figure battling for justice for her husband and the black masses.

In truth, she was a bitter woman consumed by hate who increasingly was turning to violence and murder, living off her husband’s name and ruthlessly protecting her own interests financially.

She formed Mandela United, supposedly an amateur football team who wore gold track suits but who never played a match.

In reality, they were her own vigilante group — recruited from the townships to terrorise locals suspected of not being radical enough in the fight against whites.

Nelson Mandela and his then-wife Winnie raising their fists and saluting cheering crowds upon Mandela's release from the Victor Verster prison in 1990

These thugs would tour Soweto in Winnie’s blue van, hunting down suspected police informers. Captives were taken to the team’s headquarters at Winnie’s home — an opulent mansion with a swimming pool and electric fences, which stood out among the shacks and poverty of the township.

Witnesses have told how Winnie personally whipped suspects, put plastic bags over their heads and ordered her henchmen to ‘take the dogs away’ as she swigged from a brandy bottle.

Over a two-year period in the late 1980s, Mandela United were linked to numerous kidnaps, rapes and murders. In one gruesome incident, ‘team’ members carved ANC into the skin of two teenagers and then poured acid on the wounds.

However, it was the murder of a 14-year-old boy that made headlines around the world and focused attention on the savagery of Winnie and ‘her boys’.

They were accused of having a central role in the murder of Stompie Seipei Moeketsi, a 14-year-old, just 4ft 6in tall, who suffered horrific torture and whose body was found, with his throat cut by a pair of shears, near Winnie’s house in early 1989.

He was one of four boys who had been kidnapped and severely beaten after being accused of having homosexual relations with a local white priest and also being police informers.

Winnie and her 'boys' were accused of having a central role in the murder of Stompie Seipei Moeketsi, a 14-year-old, just 4ft 6in tall, who suffered horrific torture and whose body was found, with his throat cut by a pair of shears, near Winnie’s house in early 1989

One of Winnie’s bodyguards was convicted of the boy’s murder. He claimed that Winnie had ordered him and other members of her gang to abduct the four youths.

Indeed, the boys had last been seen alive being driven away by Winnie in her blue van. She has always denied any wrongdoing, but was branded an ‘unblushing liar’ after being convicted of kidnapping Stompie and being an accessory to assault in 1991. But her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a two-year suspended sentence on appeal.

She always claimed that she had not been in Soweto on the night he died — or on the night of any other violence carried out by her thugs.

That was a lie. I covered that trial, and the night after her testimony, I drove out to Soweto, where Nico Sono, a taxi driver and former ANC activist involved in gun-running, lived in a small shack a mile or so from Winnie’s family home.

Lolo, his eldest son, had been abducted by members of the Mandela United football club.

‘Winnie Mandela appeared outside my home in a vehicle with Lolo,’ Sono told me. ‘Lolo was bleeding and badly bruised. She accused him of being a police informer, just because he had been taken in for questioning.

‘I begged, I pleaded, for Lolo’s life. She said the movement would decide what to do with him and that he was a dog. They drove off. I have never seen my son again.’

A former friend of Winnie’s called Xholisa Falati also told me that when the screams of the victims became too loud, Winnie’s thugs were ordered to sing rousing African revolutionary songs at the top of their voices.

‘If you did not follow Winnie Mandela’s orders,’ Falati said simply, ‘you would die.’

Falati took me to a mineshaft, a mile deep, where she said Winnie’s goons would take the bodies from the torture session after Winnie had decided whether they should live or die. Some were accused of being spies for the white apartheid police; others she simply didn’t like.

‘Winnie Mandela’s hands are dripping with the blood of the people of South Africa,’ Falati told me. ‘She is brutal; she is selfish; she has no conscience. She is like Idi Amin.’

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela looks out through a window in the newly renovated Mandela House museum in Soweto in 2009

Yet none of that was spoken of — or widely know outside the townships — on that day in February 1990 when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison under a historic deal to end apartheid.

Winnie, smiling for the cameras, punched 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 Verster Prison.

But the smiles, like much of Winnie’s life, were a lie. For rumours had reached Nelson about his wife’s numerous affairs while he was in jail. One of her lovers was a lawyer called Dali Mpofu, once a powerful figure in the ruling ANC.

He was assigned to a case involving Winnie at the same time as she was under investigation over the activities of ‘Mandela United’.

When they first met, Dali was 25 and Winnie 55. They moved in together in Soweto while Nelson languished in jail

In 1989, Nelson wrote from his jail cell to Winnie, telling her to get ‘that boy’ out of their house. Dali did move out, but the affair continued.

Even after Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, the affair was still on-going. Winnie and Dali flew together on Concorde to New York, and then on to Los Angeles.

There they stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel and travelled everywhere by limousine. The Mandela name meant she was invited to consort with Hollywood stars.

Winnie’s criticisms of her late ex-husband didn’t help. She accused Nelson Mandela of ‘pandering to whites’ when she backed a new party called the Economic Freedom Fighters

Once, Nelson phoned his wife’s hotel room while she was on a trip to the U.S. and her lover answered the phone.

Nelson Mandela was no fool, though, and he and Winnie never shared a bed after his release from prison. There were reports that Nelson even caught his wife in bed with Dali at home in Soweto in 1991, prompting a blazing row between the couple.

It was a devastating leak that ended the Mandela marriage for good in 1992, when a letter from Mandela’s wife to her young lover appeared in the Johannesburg Sunday Times.

Signed ‘It’s me’ by Winnie, it revealed that at one point Nelson Mandela, whom she called by his family nickname ‘Tata’, refused to speak to her for five months because of the affair.

Winnie, then 56, accused Dali of having affairs with other women. ‘You’re running around f****** at the slightest emotional excuse,’ she wrote. ‘The fact that I haven’t been speaking to Tata [Nelson] for five months now over you is no longer your concern.

She added: ‘I keep telling you the situation is deteriorating at home, you are not bothered because you are satisfying yourself every night with a woman. I won’t be your bloody fool, Dali.’

Nelson and Winnie separated a month later and formally divorced in 1996.

Nelson Mandela and Winnie never shared a bed after his release from prison. There were reports that Nelson even caught his wife in bed with Dali at home in Soweto in 1991

For all the reports of her violent behaviour, Winnie continued to command support in poor black areas. So much so that Desmond Tutu, the Nobel winner and human rights activist, last night hailed her as ‘a defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid’.

‘She refused to be bowed by the imprisonment of her husband, the perpetual harassment of her family by security forces, detentions, bannings and banishment,’ he said.

‘Her courageous defiance was deeply inspirational to me, and to generations of activists.’

It was to gloss over the violent reality and the rampant corruption Winnie was guilty of, including an embezzlement scam concocted with her lover Dali.

Dubbed by some the ‘mugger of the nation’ — a cruel twist on her own moniker as ‘mother of the nation’ — she was eventually cleared of all charges. She was like a Mafia don and Teflon-coated: nothing ever stuck.

However, as the years passed her reputation grew increasingly tarnished among those disillusioned about new black politicians enriching themselves, while doing nothing for the poor.

Winnie’s criticisms of her late ex-husband didn’t help. She accused Nelson Mandela of ‘pandering to whites’ when she backed a new party called the Economic Freedom Fighters, which even this week was starting illegal invasions of white land.

‘Mandela let us down,’ she said in a recent interview. ‘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.’

Certainly, that much is true of those who died at her hands.

I will never forget the tears I witnessed on that dark Soweto night many years ago, when the parents of some of her victims begged for Winnie to face justice.

Certainly, it did not happen in this life. Who knows what will happen in the next.