Johannesburg,
Winnie Mandela, the ex-wife of South African anti-apartheid fighter and former president Nelson Mandela, died on Monday at the age of 81, her spokesman Victor Dlamini said.

Winnie Mandela, who was married to Nelson Mandela for 38 years, played a key part in the campaign to end white minority rule but her place in history was also stained

Hailed as mother of the new South Africa, her legacy as an anti-apartheid heroine was undone when she was revealed to be a ruthless ideologue prepared to sacrifice laws and lives in pursuit of revolution and redress.

Her uncompromising methods and refusal to forgive contrasted sharply with the reconciliation espoused by her husband Nelson Mandela as he worked to forge a stable, pluralistic democracy from the racial division and oppression of apartheid.

The contradiction helped kill their marriage and destroyed the esteem in which she was held by many South Africans, although the firebrand activist retained the support of radical black nationalists to the end.

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 white authorities.