Mandela’s Ex-Wife Calls Divorce Ruling ‘Travesty’

President Nelson Mandela’s ever-defiant ex-wife Winnie assumed a new name Wednesday, called her day-old divorce “a travesty of justice” and further roiled the political waters here.

In a two-page signed fax, Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as she now calls herself, launched a blistering attack on the judge who granted the divorce Tuesday. He acted after she did not deny her husband’s allegations of adultery during their 38-year marriage.

The fax did not mention that Madikizela-Mandela failed to show up in the Rand Supreme Court early Wednesday to argue her claim that she is entitled to half the president’s financial assets. Judge Christopher F. Eloff then dismissed her case.

After the hearing, the 77-year-old president released a brief statement saying he had instructed his lawyers to negotiate an undisclosed financial payment to his former wife. Mandela also said he would waive the judge’s order that she pay Mandela’s legal costs because she contested the divorce.

“I am glad the case is over and regret that my ex-wife could not bring herself to negotiate an amicable settlement,” Mandela said in his first public comment on the divorce. “It would have saved us both and our children much pain.”

He added, “I hope and trust that she will now be prepared to be reasonable. It can only be to her benefit.”

But Madikizela-Mandela, whose roller-coaster career has been marked by personal scandals and political resilience, kept the messy case alive by bitterly blaming the judge for her misfortunes and appealing for public sympathy.

In her fax, she called the judge’s refusal Tuesday to postpone the trial, after she had fired her lawyers for their inability to win a delay in the case, “a very sad day for the millions of women and men who go through the doors of our judicial system.”

She complained that “fairness and justice” should “rank far higher than an obdurate adherence to rules of procedure.” She said she had “fought all my life against this kind of injustice” and warned that she would try to appeal the case to the Constitutional Court, the country’s highest tribunal.

Analysts said the truculent statement suggested Madikizela-Mandela, who was repeatedly jailed and harassed by apartheid-era authorities, would seek political gain from the case by portraying herself as once again an innocent victim of official persecution.

She has a loyal following among radicals in the African National Congress, the ruling party, and has blasted Mandela’s administration for the slow delivery of services to the poor. He fired her as a deputy minister last year for insubordination but she remains a member of Parliament.

In poignant testimony earlier this week, Mandela accused his estranged wife of having a “brazen and indiscreet” adulterous affair after his release from 27 years in prison in 1990, and called himself “the loneliest man” in the two years before they separated in April 1992.

In court papers, Mandela revealed that he gave his ex-wife about $800,000 to cover expenses between February 1990 and June 1995.