The Brief

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is one of the most revered —and controversial — women in South African history, but to her grandchildren the anti-apartheid icon was always just their beloved 'Big Mommy.'

Now two of Mandela's granddaughters are reexamining her divisive legacy in a new Netflix documentary series called The Trials of Winnie Mandela, currently only available in Africa.

In the trailer for the series, sisters Princess Swati Dlamini-Mandela and Princess Zaziwe Mandela-Manaway acknowledge they have set themselves a hard task, asking, "How do you ask your grandmother, are you a murderer, are you a kidnapper?'"

But they think they managed to present an unbiased portrayal of Winnie in the series.

"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," says Dlamini-Mandela, 47.

While Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first Black president and a global icon — having spent 27 years in jail for his role in the fight against apartheid — his wife Winnie, who was arguably just as instrumental in that fight, has been widely maligned.

That's because Winnie is accused of encouraging some of the worst Black-on-Black violence in the townships during apartheid in the 1980s.

A gang of youths associated with her, called the Mandela United Football Club, were responsible for vigilante abductions and killings of those suspected of being government informers – even children.

In 1997, she appeared in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by the new government to investigate crimes committed during apartheid.

After being pressed by the Desmond Tutu, who led the commission, she said: "Things went horribly wrong…for that I am deeply sorry." The commission found her "politically and morally accountable" for the crimes committed by her gang of bodyguards.

Even though the Netflix show is only being released now, filming of the documentary started before Winnie's death in 2018 aged 81. So she gets to answer for herself.

"Our grandfather's painted as a saint, and our grandmother's painted as a sinner," Dlamini-Mandela says.

"And we ask her that question…what do you think about that? And she says, well, who is anyone to say, whether you're saint or a sinner, that's between me and my God."

What is clear is that Winnie's commitment to the struggle came at great personal cost.

When Mandela was imprisoned, she was left not only to raise their children alone, but to carry on his activism – which she did fearlessly.

She became such a thorn in the side of the apartheid state that she was regularly targeted.

In 1969 she was put in solitary confinement for 491 days and tortured. She says in the documentary of that time: "The 18 months in solitary confinement, it left scars nothing can heal."

She was jailed numerous times in the decades that followed, with her Soweto home frequently raided in the dead of night. Ultimately, she was exiled to the remote town of Brandfort, in the Free State, in a harsh attempt to stifle her influence and activism.

Despite the brutal treatment and constant humiliations, she never gave up.

But she was criticized for her increasing militancy, even within her African National Congress party. Especially for a speech she gave in 1986 appearing to condone the brutal township punishment of "necklacing" used on alleged police collaborators.

In South Africa, "necklacing" was a brutal form of killing in which a car tyre was forced over a person's chest and shoulders and set alight.

She was also villainized for alleged romantic affairs while her husband was in jail. When Mandela was released, their marriage faltered, ending in a divorce in 1996 for which she was mostly blamed.

Reassessing Winnie through a feminist lens

"I wholeheartedly don't believe that a male comrade would've waited 27 years for a wife's return. The alleged affair feels like something they used against her in order to vilify her," says Momo Matsunyane, who directed a recent play in Johannesburg, "The Cry of Winnie Mandela," which sought to rehabilitate her image.

In recent years, a new generation of young South Africans like Matsunyane have begun to reassess Winnie's legacy from a feminist perspective.

When she died in 2018, thousands mourned all night outside her home. There are now t-shirts with her face on them, street murals, and a major Johannesburg road named after her.

"It's true to say that she may have been involved in some events that occurred that made her seem ruthless," Matsunyane says.

But she adds it doesn't have to be a false dichotomy.

"It's also true that she was fiercely resilient in the face of a greatly violent and inhumane system. She put her life and body on the line for the fight for freedom."

Aside from her renewed status as a revolutionary icon, what are her granddaughters' most cherished memories of her?

"God, there's so many," says Mandela-Manaway. "I mean, her cooking for us in the kitchen on Sunday lunches … giving me hugs, giving me advice, talking to her about anything."

Despite growing up in turbulent times, the sisters — now both in their late forties — weren't that politically aware until they were young adults.

"We were kids, so we didn't realize that we were Nelson and Winnie's grandchildren," Mandela-Manaway says. "Not like...we knew that these were political figures who were known across the world. We had no idea."

But much as their mother Zenani – Winnie and Nelson's first daughter – tried to normalize things for them, it was an unusual childhood.

"And we literally were like, we only had each other, because no one wanted to be associated with us," the sisters say. "Being cool... Mandela became cool after."

When she died, the hashtag #SheDidn'tDieSheMultiplied trended on South African social media.

"There are a lot of young women who identify with the spirit of Mama Winnie," says theater director Matsunyane.

With the early history of soccer first documented in England, that's where you'll find the roots of the sport. Not always easy to get there from Los Angeles — but a local British pub with a few locations to choose from brings you close.

The operators of Lucky Baldwins Pub joined AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross to explain what makes their atmosphere special — it's all about the sports and traditional British bites, pints and pasties.

About the owner

Owner-operator Peggy Simonian was working for the British Tourist Authority when they decided to bring a pub to Pasadena. Three years after opening, they got their following after hosting their first Belgian Beer Festival.

What sets their food apart? The beer batter

"I think there's this stigma around British food that it's a little bland," said general manager Patsy Sutton.

She says the fish and chips knock people's socks off — and it all comes down to the beer batter.

They use locally sourced Pacific cod instead of its Atlantic relative and an undisclosed pale ale. This combo drives the taste.

Lucky Baldwins' most popular dish is the fish 'n' chips.

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Courtesy Peggy Simonian

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The ultimate experience in the eyes of the owner

 "I like it when it's a nice sunny day outside our patio in Old Towne ... enjoy a nice Belgian beer ... listen to the music and enjoy the California weather," Simonian said.

She added that her go-to beers currently include a Belgian lager, blonde or tripel. It's all about the mood.

Restaurant details

• Lucky Baldwins Pub first opened in 1996 and now has two Pasadena locations and one in Sierra Madre.
• They're an official bar partner with LAFC.
• They host: Pasadena Reds, a local Liverpool FC support group; Los Angeles Hammers, a West Ham FC support group; and Eastside Gooners, a local support group for Arsenal FC.
• They also have special events tied to the Belgian Beer Festival and Oktoberfest.

Menu items we tried

• Fish 'n' Chips — cod dipped in ale batter with a side of steak fries and tartar sauce
• Bangers and Mash — two pork sausages with peas and mashed potatoes (also available with fries).
• Cornish Pastie — a handheld pie with minced meat
• Chicken Curry Pastie — a handheld pie with traditional British chicken curry

What should we try next?

A 2-acre slice of parkland that runs diagonally between 8th Street and 10th Street near Wilson High School is slated to get new trees, landscaping and seating — a project that will complete its transformation from an old railway right-of-way into a welcoming greenspace.

The land was once used by Pacific Electric, whose Red Car trains used to slash diagonally across the area from Wrigley to the Colorado Lagoon. For years, Long Beach has been slowly converting a 9.2-acre stretch of the former railway into parkland between 4th Street and Park Avenue to 11th Street and Loma.

This portion, called the 10th Street Greenbelt, runs between Termino and Grand avenues. It was outfitted with a 900-foot concrete path in 2022. This next phase will add 48 Redbud, Oak, and Sycamore trees, native shrubs, solar lighting, boulder and bench seating, and several granite auxiliary trails that connect the surrounding neighborhoods to the path. There are no plans for restrooms or tables, officials said.

The city of Long Beach provided this rendering of plans for the revamped 10th Street Greenbelt.

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Courtesy the city of Long Beach

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Plans were informed largely by a survey and feedback gathered over the last four years by the Greenbelt Heights Neighborhood Association. Officials say surveys consistently pointed out a need for more seating, native plants and improved drainage in the nearby neighborhoods.

Sharon Turner, the association’s president, said it’s been a 15-year effort that originally inspired the creation of the neighborhood group. For years, the path was “a dumping area of tall grass,” she said. Now, the association is planning to hold meetings at the park.

“It’s been a long haul,” Turner said. “We’ve been really happy with the support, but it definitely started as a local resident push, and we got some support once it got legs.”

Planned for construction in early 2027, it is hoped to be finished by that fall. The project has a $2.58 million budget, mostly funded by a $1.5 million county grant.

Public Works staff are planning to unveil detailed plans at a meeting on May 28, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Recreation Park Community Center (4900 E. 7th St.) Members of the public are encouraged to ask questions and share their thoughts. Interpretation services in Spanish, Khmer and Tagalog are available upon prior request.

Click here for more updates on the project.

As she runs for re-election, L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto faces turmoil and claims of unethical behavior from career prosecutors in her office who have accused her of favoring political donors in criminal cases and questioned her administrative decisions and demeanor.

The allegations have been laid out in emails and a memo obtained by LAist, as well as a sworn declaration to a court.

In emails to colleagues earlier this year, two supervising prosecutors questioned the city attorney’s directive to drop a price gouging case against a major campaign donor. One claimed it’s part of a pattern by Feldstein Soto.

“This latest instruction now to dismiss an active case fully supported by the evidence showing not just probable cause, but a high likelihood of conviction by a jury at trial is improper and unethical,” wrote Dennis Kong, who leads the unit handling price gouging prosecutions, in a Feb. 3 email to colleagues. “Especially in light of the fact that we have confirmed that the parties involved are campaign donors."

Kong did not respond to requests for comment. Office policy prohibits him and almost all other City Attorney staff from speaking to the media.

In interviews with LAist, Feldstein Soto denied ever allowing money or personal relationships to affect her decisions.

“That’s not how I roll,” she said. Instead, Feldstein Soto said her decisions were based on a policy she put in place to follow the Constitution.

In the memo, sent to higher-ups in the office in December, a different group of supervising prosecutors pushed back on Feldstein Soto’s decision to delete criminal case data that’s more than 10 years old.

Feldstein Soto told LAist deleting the older data was a prudent step to make sure sensitive information from older criminal cases — which is confidential under state law — doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office later said the older data will be kept on a physical backup, with prosecutors' access restricted. It’s unclear whether that’s been followed through on.

While Feldstein Soto has dealt with these criticisms from career staff, a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit from a different, former senior prosecutor — alleging misconduct by Feldstein Soto — has been working its way through the courts.

Among other things, that case — filed by the former chief of the prosecutions branch under Feldstein Soto — alleges the city attorney illegally ordered prosecutors to drop a case in order to help her friend and a major donor. The plaintiff, Michelle McGinnis, alleges she was fired in retaliation for opposing and disclosing unlawful actions by Feldstein Soto. The city attorney and the city’s lawyers in the suit have denied the claims, saying Feldstein Soto disciplined her for legitimate reasons.

A judge has allowed that lawsuit to proceed, finding the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto had legitimate reasons to discipline McGinnis.

From the evidence, the ruling states, “a reasonable trier of fact could conclude plaintiff’s protected activity was a contributing factor in defendant’s adverse employment actions against her.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and six of the 15 L.A. City Council members have endorsed Feldstein Soto in her bid for re-election in June. She lost the endorsement of the main LAPD officers’ union over the handling of a massive data breach that exposed confidential files about officers. The police union and county District Attorney Nathan Hochman are endorsing a challenger.

Feldstein Soto told LAist the pushback from the criminal branch of her office is in response to her efforts to reform the City Attorney’s Office.

“I came into this office under a cloud of corruption. Twenty percent of our City Council [members] were indicted or in jail. Six lawyers in this office were under investigation,” Feldstein Soto said. “I was elected to change the status quo. I’m still doing that. And people who benefited under the old status quo have a different agenda.”

Wildfire price gouging case

In the wake of last year’s devastating wildfires, the City Attorney’s Office has filed four criminal cases alleging price gouging, which makes it illegal to spike prices more than 10% during an emergency.

In February, Feldstein Soto directed prosecutors to drop two of those cases.

Scott Marcus, the city attorney’s criminal branch chief, informed prosecutors about that decision in a Feb. 3 email.

Feldstein Soto, he wrote, was concerned the defendants did not receive cease and desist letters before the charges, did not think there was enough evidence to charge people who manage the company and did not believe the cases were an appropriate use of the office’s “limited resources.”

Marcus wrote that Feldstein Soto agreed with his suggestion to dismiss the cases after they “verify that any victim of illegal price increases received restitution and was made whole.”

Kong, a supervising attorney in the criminal branch, responded via email that the order was “improper and unethical” because the case was strong and one of the defendants had donated to Feldstein Soto’s campaign.

“It is safe to say that a pattern has now emerged of the City Attorney's personal interest in protecting her donors,” Kong wrote. “We cannot have that.”

The case Kong was referring to involves the Paddock Riding Club in Atwater Village. In December, prosecutors at the City Attorney’s Office charged PCAM LLC, which does business as the riding club, and three members of the family that runs the business with “price gouging animal boarding services.”

Publicly available court records do not detail the allegations against the riding club, but the company was accused on social media of more than tripling its normal boarding prices to evacuees of the Eaton Fire. The Paddock Riding Club apologized after online backlash and said it was working to rectify the situation.

The City Attorney’s Office confirmed that one person paid the riding club about $1,900 at the higher rate and was later refunded.

The lead individual defendant’s first and last name, birthdate and address corresponds with Alex Chaves Sr., who stewards the property and lives there, according to the Paddock’s website. When reached for comment, his son — also named Alex Chaves — told LAist that the Paddock is “my dad’s place.” Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for the city attorney, said Feldstein Soto’s office does not know if the father or son is the defendant.

Chaves Sr. and defense attorneys in the case have not responded to requests for comment.

Campaign finance records show Chaves Sr., his wife, son Alex Chaves and daughter-in-law each gave maximum-allowed campaign contributions to Feldstein Soto on the same day in December 2024, totaling $7,200.

Around the time they filed the Paddock case in early December, prosecutors also filed price gouging charges against another horse boarding business — Gibson Ranch in Sunland — and its owner. Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to also drop that case when she ordered the Paddock case dropped.

The Gibson Ranch defendants do not show up as donating to Feldstein Soto in campaign contribution searches.

That case was dismissed this month. Their defense attorney, Greg Yacoubian, said the price gouging law did not apply in the Gibson Ranch case because it compared prices charged by a new owner with those from the previous owner at that location. (The price gouging law is specific to a particular person or business selling, or offering to sell, something for a price that’s over 10% higher than they charged just before a declared emergency.)

The arraignment hearing for the Paddock case has been postponed twice since Feldstein Soto’s early February directive to dismiss it, and is now scheduled for June 18.

“We have not moved to dismiss because the Office is confirming the evidence in the case in accordance with appropriate practice, policies, and procedures,” said a city attorney spokesperson.

Scott Marcus, chief of the city attorney’s criminal branch, at a Feb. 26 court hearing in the Paddock case, where he told the judge the arraignment was being postponed.

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Nick Gerda

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LAist

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Feldstein Soto called claims of favoritism “nonsense,” telling LAist she knew who the Paddock defendants were but not whether they donated to her campaign.

She said she wanted to dismiss the two price gouging cases because prosecutors failed to follow a policy she put in place in 2023 — to only prosecute company leaders for the actions of their business if they were actively involved in committing the act or failed to fix the problem after being put on notice they could face charges.

A spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s administration said the City Attorney’s Office has sent warning letters to almost all of the roughly 1,100 potential price gouging defendants from the wildfires as a way to achieve “compliance and restitution without having to file criminal or even civil charges.”

The goal of regulatory prosecutions, she said, “is to achieve compliance and to get restitution for the victims.”

In follow-up emails forwarded to colleagues who advise on ethics compliance, Kong and another supervising prosecutor in his unit expressed alarm at Feldstein Soto’s directive. Kong called the Paddock case "righteous" and described an “ethical conundrum.”

“I do not want to place our supervisors, our line deputies, or myself in a position where they will be compromised in any shape or form or worse, an accessory to unethical conduct,” Kong wrote. He also noted the law does not require warning letters before filing price gouging charges.

[Click here to read the emails.]

The McGinnis declaration

In a sworn court declaration last year, McGinnis — the former criminal branch chief ousted by Feldstein Soto — alleged a range of ethics violations by the city attorney.

Among them, McGinnis wrote that Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to dismiss a building safety prosecution where the defense attorney was a friend whose wife was a maximum donor to her campaign. That case — against Zenith Insurance and its then-CEO Kari Lynn Van Gundy — alleged 14 criminal violations of building safety laws, including around fire safety and exit doors. Court records show Feldstein Soto’s office dropped the charges against Van Gundy in January 2024, followed by dropping the case against the company in September 2024.

Campaign finance records corroborate the donation described in the allegations. Defense attorney Ben Reznik’s wife gave a maximum campaign contribution to the city attorney in 2022, per campaign filings. Feldstein Soto said she knows Reznik’s wife through social circles.

The city attorney “simply wanted her donor/friend’s case dismissed,” McGinnis wrote in her court declaration, which was filed as part of her whistleblower retaliation lawsuit.

The city attorney denied friendships or donations have ever had anything to do with her decisions.

“ I've prosecuted tons of cases,” Feldstein Soto said. “I've filed cross complaints against all kinds of people, including donors who have called me up spitting and yelling, OK?”

Reznik told LAist that Feldstein Soto’s recommendation was to dismiss only the charges against the then-CEO — Van Gundy — but not against the company itself. The CEO “had no clue” about the building matters that the case was about, he said.

“There was absolutely no basis to name the individual [CEO] of the company” as a defendant, Reznik said. The case, he said, was about “very minor infractions” regarding building codes like fire doors, some of which he said did not apply to the building in question.

After fixing the issues that were cited and getting clearance from the fire department, the charges against the company were dismissed, Reznik said.

In another case, McGinnis wrote, Feldstein Soto pressed hard — “without evidence” — to McGinnis and LAPD leaders for charges to be filed against an activist she thought had protested outside the home of another major donor. In that case, McGinnis wrote that LAPD commanders demanded a meeting with city attorney managers to object to Feldstein Soto’s pressure. The city attorney says she later declined to file charges.

Feldstein Soto’s office says that allegation has “no truth.” As for the alleged meeting with LAPD leadership, her spokesperson said: “We have no knowledge of how the meeting came about and what happened at the meeting.”

“In no uncertain terms, the City Attorney did not and would not pressure a client on any issue,” added the spokesperson. (In addition to overseeing the city’s prosecutors, the city attorney is the top lawyer representing and advising city officials about their official duties.)

Following the judge’s ruling that the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto disciplined McGinnis for legitimate reasons, the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in early 2027.

Data deletion memo

In December, three senior prosecutors in the City Attorney’s Office wrote a memo objecting to what they described as a plan to “purge all data” older than 10 years from the office’s text-only database of criminal case details, known as the Criminal Case Management System, or CCMS, as it migrates to a new system.

City attorney policy has been to destroy physical paper records of criminal cases, while the database of case information has been kept for decades, except for specific types of cases where deletion is required by law.

The memo was from three supervising prosecutors: Stacey Anthony, who directly supervises about three dozen criminal prosecutors, and two of her deputies.

They warned that deleting the data would harm victims and defendants because it’s often the only remaining source of crucial information.

“In many instances it would result in a miscarriage of justice,” states the Dec. 12 memo, a copy of which was obtained by LAist.

They wrote that the older data is used daily for a variety of crucial tasks — including strengthening rape and murder cases, evaluating the history of criminal defendants, generating letters for employment and immigration purposes that no charges were filed against an arrested person, and vetting criminal histories for police officers and others seeking licenses, credentials and firearm permits.

The supervising prosecutors wrote that it’s crucial that the older information be made readily accessible to prosecutors on a daily basis. The info is used for up to 50 requests per day to their part of the criminal branch alone, according to the memo.

[Click here to read the memo.]

Feldstein Soto and her office spokesperson initially confirmed the plan to delete the data altogether.

“I wanted to purge everything older than three years…but 10 years seems to be the consensus for how long we need to keep anything,” Feldstein Soto told LAist in December.

Feldstein Soto said deleting the data was a prudent step to make sure information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office said it does not have any evidence the database has been misused.

She said she’s looked in the database just once, looking up herself and seeing information about an old DUI case against her, which she pleaded to reckless driving.

“This came up in my last campaign. It was all over the place,” said Feldstein Soto.

During her 2022 campaign, information about her 1997 DUI case was posted on social media by an advocacy group. The post shows a public printout from the court summarizing the charges, without the kinds of detailed info that would be in the office database.

In January, a spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s office said the plan is to keep the older case data on an encrypted hard drive that will be more restrictive for prosecutors to access. She and her spokespeople have not answered questions in recent weeks about whether case data has already been deleted, nor whether they’ve developed the specific policies for prosecutors’ access.

Feldstein Soto told LAist she had to learn quickly about criminal law after being elected in late 2022 as the top elected boss above the city’s prosecutors.

“You realize, I had no criminal [law] background. So this was all learning on the job,” she said. Her experience before being elected was in bankruptcy and corporate law.

“It was baptism by fire,” she said, “to start in this office without a criminal background.”