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Lady Naipaul a liar, says ex-Mrs Mandela
Winnie Mandela has labelled writer Nadira Naipaul "a liar and a fraud" following a controversy over an article written by her in which the estranged wife of South Africa's apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was critical of him.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has called writer Nadira Naipaul “a liar and a fraud”. At the root of the accusation is an article written by the former in which she says the estranged wife of South Africa’s apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was critical of him.
“It’s a figment of her malicious imagination,” Madikizela-Mandela wrote in an article of her own in the Sunday Times. She denied Naipaul had interviewed her while on a visit to Mandela’s Soweto home here with her husband, author Sir V.S. Naipaul.
In Naipaul’s article in the London Evening Standard, Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying her former husband had let down the black citizens of South Africa by entering into a deal with the then white apartheid government.
“Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks,” the article read.
Madikizela-Mandela also allegedly told Naipaul she’d never forgive Mandela for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize along with the then President F.W. de Klerk of the all-white National Party.
The Sunday Times said it couldn’t reach Naipaul for comment. Evening Standard managing editor Doug Wills defended Naipaul, saying the interview did take place.
