Fundamentally flawed heroines of our time

"A queen is not afraid to fail. For her, failure is another stepping stone to greatness" is a quote by Oprah Winfrey. She's one of the most remarkable women in the world.

It mirrors the lives of many incredible women who were not afraid to fall on their road to greatness.

These are women with a legacy that is not just astounding but that is also riddled with flaws.

THE CONTROVERSIAL FREEDOM HEROINE

On February 11, 1990, Winnie Madikizela Mandela was pictured walking towards a rally with her husband Nelson Mandela.

Mandela had just been set free after spending 27 years in prison. Mandela and Winnie appeared to have been holding hands. Winnie raised her left arm.

She clenched her fist and wore a smile that hid her personal struggle for freedom and womanhood.

Up until then, this powerful photo remains the most epic of all Winnie and Mandela’s photos. It was widely circulated when Winnie died in a Johannesburg hospital on Monday, April 2, this year.

Winnie was not just another ordinary politician. She was the stalwart of the African National Congress (ANC). She started seeing Mandela while he was still married to Eveline Wase, causing some critics to label her a ‘husband-snatcher’. But the real storm in her love life kicked in when Mandela went to prison.

The couple had two daughters at the time. She took on the mantle of calling for freedom and was sent to jail and solitary confinement several times. By the time Mandela was released from prison, she had already taken a new lover. For two years after Mandela’s release, she dated and slept with her lawyer lover who was half her age.

In 1992, Mandela announced that the two had separated, citing her infidelity as the cause. Their divorce was finalised in March 1996 after 38 years of marriage, most of which she had kept the imprisoned Mandela’s candle burning.

Since then, multiple versions have emerged on the extent she went to in her quest for sexual fulfillment behind Mandela’s back. But what was probably the darkest spot in Winnie’s remarkable life was the murder of Stompie Seipei. On January 1, 1989, she was accused of participating in the kidnapping, torture and murder of 14-year-old Stompie.

The young boy’s body was discovered at a waste land near her house. Apparently, Stompie had become a police target after gaining popularity for his activism in the struggle for freedom.

Following his arrest, Winnie was said to have brandished him as an informant, setting the stage for his eventual death. In 1991, Winnie was convicted for kidnapping and assaulting the boy. She was handed a six-year sentence that was later suspended in a 1994 appeal.

The death of Stompie was placed on Jerry Richardson who was a member of the group known as Mandela Football Club.

THE BOLD ENVIRONMENTALIST

Seven years after her death, Wangari Maathai’s shoes are yet to be filled. Wangari was the ordinary face of an extraordinary Kenyan woman.

She was the first woman in East Africa to acquire a PhD in 1971. She would go on to become the first professor in Kenya.

She lost jobs out of government malice, got sabotaged by courts, refused to be boxed by her gender, and battled with riot police officers during the heady push for multi-party democracy in the late and early 1990s.

Years later, her sweat was handsomely rewarded when she broke the glass ceiling to become the first African woman to receive the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

Ironically, Wangari’s achievements were celebrated abroad more than they were celebrated in Kenya. This is because in the face of former president Daniel Moi’s dictatorial one-party rule, Wangari did not shy away from using both her body and brain in her advocacy.

For 11 months starting on February 28, 1992, Wangari led a group of women in protests that lasted for 11 months. In one of these protests, Wangari led the women in stripping naked at Uhuru Park’s Freedom Corner.

They were protesting the detention without trial of over 52 Kenyans who had been arrested during the push for multi-party democracy. For years, this act of protest accosted Wangari, with critics saying she had gone too far.

A GOLDEN VOICE SHATTERED BY DRUGS

The talented and influential as Whitney Houston sold over 200 million records worldwide and went on to make history with the best-selling debut album by a woman in 1985.

She also held seven consecutive number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100. To crown it all, Whitney starred on screen and bagged seven Grammy awards.

But then, the mother of one also struggled with a drug addiction problem. In fact, her death on February 11, 2012, was partly attributed to cocaine.

She had been found dead in her guest room at the Beverly Hilton, California, after accidentally drowning in a bathtub.

Her daughter Bobbi Kristina died aged 22 in an almost similar way three years later. Kristina was discovered unresponsive in her bathtub.

Whitney’s downfall is largely attributed to her marriage to Bobby Brown, although per accounts, it was she who introduced him to drugs.

Whitney is said to have been doing drugs way before she got married in a bid to handle the pressure that had come with her star status. She was reportedly high moments before she walked down the aisle in 1992Her marriage lasted from 1992 to 2007.

It is within this period that Whitney’s dalliance with drugs ended up consuming her voice, career, and eventually her life.

HUNTER TURNED HUNTED

In October 2017, Italian actress and film director Asia Argento boldly revealed that for five years in the 1990s, she had been forced, coerced or lured into non-consensual sex by disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein.

Her bold action turned her into the figure head of the #MeToo Movement against sexual assault. Ms. Argento did not stop there. She would go on to become the Me Too figure head when during the Cannes Film Festival that was held on May 20 this year, she gave a speech in which she accused Weinstein of raping her in 1997 when she was 21. Her bold proclamation inspired other victims to come out and speak.

But now Ms Argento is in the eye of the storm after leaked documents showed that she paid her former co-star Jimmy Bennet Sh38 million after he accused her of sexually assaulting him.

The assault reportedly took place in 2013 when Jimmy was aged 17. Although Ms Argento has admitted to paying out the amount, she has denied coercing Jimmy into a sexual relationship, saying that there was only friendship between them. At the time Ms Argento is said to have sexually assaulted Jimmy, she was in a relationship with CNN’s celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain who died by suicide in June this year.

These allegations have in turn dented the efforts that Argento and other activists have been making in the war against sexual predators. For example, Tarana Burke, the #Me Too founder, fears that the allegations against Argento could be used to discredit the movement’s efforts.

DARING BUT LOATHED

Not too many women have been able to scale the heights that Hillary Clinton has. She rose from the shadows of the light-weight ‘First Lady’ title to become an elected US Senator, US Secretary of State, and top advocate for women’ rights.

In fact, it could have been Hillary at the White House today. But her dream and quest to be the first woman to occupy the highest office in the United States was crashed in November 2016 when she lost the battle to Donald Trump.

In what turned out to be a long mud-slinging race, Hillary’s positive attributes were dimmed by flaws that eventually put her down.

The first was her use of her private email server for official communication during her tenure as US Secretary of State. This was bloated up into the infamous ‘Lock her up’ chants that fuelled Trump’s campaign.

But perhaps the clog in her legacy as a champion of women and gender equity was in her handling of sexual allegations against her staff and husband. Last year, Hillary was accused by a former female staffer of failing to fire one of her advisers who was a sexual predator.

In her defence, Hillary said that she did not think that firing the accused staffer was the right solution. Instead, she asked the assaulted female staffer to change jobs.

This is further compounded by allegations of sexual assault by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. So far, four women have come out to claim that they were raped, groped, sexually assaulted, harassed and exposed to sexual scenes by Hillary’s husband. Ironically, over the years, Ms Clinton has built her reputation as a champion of women rights.

This has in turn led to condemnation of her silence, especially in the on-going advocacy against sexual assault in the US.

THE IRON LADY

For decades now, Martha Karua has built the reputation for being an iron lady. She withstood political heat, and walked out on then powerful president Daniel Moi while waving the opposition hand sign in 1997. Few people would have had the guts to do this. But her legacy does not stop there.

Throughout her career in law, Ms Karua has established herself as a leading activist and lobbyist for women and children’ rights. In 1991, she was recognised as a human rights defender by the Human Rights Watch, a global human rights non-governmental organisation.

In 1999, she was awarded as the Kenya Jurist of the Year. But her decorated career has not been flawless.

For example, opinion is divided on how she handled the 2008 political negotiations that led to the formation of the grand coalition government following weeks of violence that left more than 1,300 people dead and over 650,000 Kenyans displaced from their homes.

Also, in last year’s general elections, Ms Karua faced criticism after endorsing the Jubilee party against her norm.

To many people, Ms. Karua’s endorsement was seen as a compromise on her principles in a bid to woo the electorate in an area that was seen as pro-Jubilee. This is because in 2013, she had opposed on principle the same candidates she was now endorsing.

Eventually, she lost her gubernatorial bid to controversial former cabinet secretary Ann Waiguru.