The ANC would wait for struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to return from the US to South Africa to ask her about a UK media interview in which she reportedly lashed out at Nelson Mandela. "This is not a matter we could sort out over the phone," said African National Congress spokesperson Ishmael Mnisi.

He said attempts so far to contact her had been unsuccessful and the ANC decided it would be best to wait for her to return. "There is nothing much that can be said up until she has met with the leadership to discuss the matter. We have not heard anything from Comrade Winnie on the matter," said Mnisi. He said he did not know when she was scheduled to return to South Africa.

Madikizela-Mandela criticised South Africa's first democratically elected President, who is also her ex-husband, in an  interview published in the London Evening Standard this week. She said Mandela had become a 'corporate foundation' who was being 'wheeled out to collect the money'. Madikizela-Mandela also called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu a 'cretin', in the interview with Nadira Naipaul, who visited her with her husband, writer VS Naipaul, in Soweto.

"Mandela let us down," said Madikizela-Mandela. "He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside," said Madikizela-Mandela, in the interview published on www.standard.co.uk. She also said 'this name is an albatross around the necks of my family' and that she could not forgive him for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with apartheid's last President FW de Klerk. - Sapa