Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s life can be seen as a metaphor for South Africa in its struggle to escape the oppression of apartheid to emerge as the Rainbow Nation and its subsequent decline into violence and corruption. Her role in this drama was at first honorable but ultimately highly dubious if not indeed criminal.

Thus some of the warm tributes that have been paid following her death aged 81 ring more than a little hollow. Winnie Mandela was a woman of undoubted charisma and striking looks. Under white rule, she became the country’s first black social worker. When Nelson Mandela met her in 1957, he said he fell deeply in love with her. They later married and when Mandela was convicted of terrorism and jailed for life in 1964, Winnie became a standard-bearer for his anti-apartheid campaign. Though imprisoned herself for over a year, she was the rallying point for all opposed to white rule. As Mandela made clear when he was finally released in 1990, his love for her had sustained him during his long years of detention, many in solitary confinement.

But although she became an international symbol for the anti-apartheid struggle, there was a dark side to her campaign. Her personal bodyguard, known as the Mandela United Football Club conducted a reign of terror in Johannesburg’s black township of Soweto. She publicly endorsed the use of “necklacing”, putting petrol-filled tires round the necks of suspected informers and setting fire to them. In 1989, she was implicated in the murder of the 14-year-old activist Stompie Seipei whose throat was cut by members of her bodyguard. It was alleged that she had been involved in the torture of the boy. In 1991, after the fall of the apartheid regime she was found guilty of being involved in the murder and given six years jail, which sentence was later controversially reduced to a fine.

Nelson Mandela always refused to condemn his wife but in the six years after his release their relationship broke down and they were divorced in 1996. Under his presidency, Winnie had been given the minor arts and culture portfolio but allegations of corruption caused her to lose that. But she remained a potent figure within the ANC. Nevertheless, to many she represented all that was wrong with the organization that had won non-white South Africans their freedom. It has been bribery and payola that has robbed the Rainbow Nation and its citizens who expected so much, of the growth and prosperity that a properly run and efficient administration could have and hopefully one day will produce.

Instead, since Mandela quit the presidency in 1999, the country has become a kleptocracy epitomized by the disgraced and ousted president Jacob Zuma. And sadly Winnie Mandela was part of this economically crippling program of plunder. In 2003 she was convicted of fraud and theft and sentenced to five years in prison.

Her contribution to the destruction of apartheid cannot be denied. But then, nor can the serious wrongs in which she was involved. Yet ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe said this week that Winnie Mandela was one of those who could tell “exactly what is wrong and right” and that the ANC would miss her guidance. For many seeking the rule of law in South Africa this was a startling comment.