I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about until I heard the poem Fired Up!! today. Written by Everett Hoagland, I loved hearing Winnie Mandela’s story. Although she has been accused of taking bribes and various other crimes, I loved the way that this poem explained her reasoning and possibly how she felt. One of the first things I noticed about the poem was the irony of the whole situation. How Winnie married a revolutionary, became one herself, and then was later fired by her revolutionary husband for being too revolutionary. This dynamic made me more interested in looking at their marriage and what went wrong.
Before they were married, Nelson Mandela was involved with many political activities and was already being arrested for various protests. Winnie was more calm and had studied social work in college. During the course of their marriage, they both spent time in jail. Nelson came out and got back involved with politics. Winnie also did the same, but with new ideas. As the poem mentions, she was tortured during her time in jail and this among other things led to her being more accepting of violent tactics, such as necklacing and even murder. This difference in opinion may have been what caused them to divorce.
Another thing this poem does well is show the harsh realities of Winnie’s life, using the tactic of comparing her to the queen. While Winnie was in jail being tortured, Hoagland points out that the Queen never had to raise her “genteel, white-gloved fist in the face of an automatic weapons-wielding police charge.” But, the poem also shows that these experiences helped her by making her stronger, shown by the image of her “pregnant with a new nation.” One stanza that we didn’t really discuss in class that stood out to me was the second to last one. In it, the “Warrior Prince,” (Nelson Mandela), has tea with the Queen while she has a crown and jewelry made from the coins, tears, and sweat of the natives in South Africa. This could have been a reference to when Winnie was angry that money went towards showing the Queen around, instead of more humanitarian things.
Then we get to the last stanza, with the final words being: “Winnie Mandela was fired (...) for doing what she had been asked, told, inspired to do-for a quarter of a century.” This final statement shows how Winnie was doing what she believed in: being a revolutionary.
