Source: AFP
1936
Born on September 26 as Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela in the Eastern Cape province.
1955
Becomes the country’s first black social worker, working at Soweto’s Baragwanath hospital.
1958
Marries Nelson Mandela, a lawyer and leading member of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC).
1962
Mandela is jailed. Over the next years, Madikizela-Mandela emerges as an influential ANC figure, enduring harassment and stints in prison.
1986
In her most controversial speech, she endorses the practice of “necklacing” or burning people by setting alight a tyre around their necks.
1990
Nelson Mandela is freed after 27 years in prison.
1991
Madikizela-Mandela is found guilty and fined for the kidnapping of four Soweto youths and the killing of one by her team of bodyguards known as the “Mandela United Football Club”.
1992
She is forced out of all executive positions in the ANC after allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
1994
Appointed deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology in Mandela’s unity government. The next year, she is sacked for insubordination but keeps her position as member of parliament and head of the powerful Women’s League.
1996
Divorced from Mandela, after four years of separation.
1998
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission implicates her in torture, murder and abduction during the struggle against apartheid.
2003-2004
Convicted of fraud, with a suspended jail sentence.
2009
Manages to secure only the fifth place on the ANC’s electoral list for the 2009 general election.
2013
Death of Nelson Mandela.
2018
April 2 2018: Death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
