JOHANNESBURG — Netflix released a documentary series titled The Trials of Winnie Mandela, in which Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's granddaughters, Princess Swati Dlamini-Mandela and Princess Zaziwe Mandela-Manaway, examine her legacy. The series is currently available only in Africa. Filming began before Madikizela-Mandela's death in 2018 at age 81.

While Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his role in the fight against apartheid, Madikizela-Mandela raised their children and continued political activism. In 1969, she was held in solitary confinement for 491 days and tortured. She was jailed numerous times in the decades that followed, and her Soweto home was frequently raided at night. The apartheid government later exiled her to Brandfort in the Free State in an attempt to stifle her influence and activism.

"The 18 months in solitary confinement, it left scars nothing can heal," Madikizela-Mandela said. "How do you ask your grandmother, are you a murderer, are you a kidnapper?" Dlamini-Mandela and Mandela-Manaway ask in the series.

In 1986, she gave a speech that appeared to condone the practice of necklacing, a form of killing in which a car tyre was forced over a person's chest and shoulders and set on fire. During the 1980s, she was accused of encouraging Black-on-Black violence in South African townships. The Mandela United Football Club, a gang of youths associated with her, committed vigilante abductions and killings of suspected government informers, including children.

In 1997, Madikizela-Mandela appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After being questioned by Desmond Tutu, she apologized, saying she was deeply sorry for events that went wrong during the apartheid era. The commission found her politically and morally accountable for crimes committed by her gang of bodyguards.

She was also accused of having romantic affairs while Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa's first Black president, was imprisoned. The couple divorced in 1996, and Madikizela-Mandela was largely blamed for the separation.

"Our grandfather's painted as a saint, and our grandmother's painted as a sinner," Dlamini-Mandela said. She added: "I'm so proud of this work, because it is not just a myopic view of a person that we love, but also who is complex, and has had a complex history." "We were kids, so we didn't realize that we were Nelson and Winnie's grandchildren," Mandela-Manaway said.

After Madikizela-Mandela's death, thousands of people mourned outside her home throughout the night, and the hashtag #SheDidn'tDieSheMultiplied trended on South African social media. T-shirts bearing her image, street murals, and a major road in Johannesburg have been created to honor her. In recent years, young South Africans have begun to reassess her legacy from a feminist perspective.