Mandela Again Fires His Estranged Wife : South Africa: Second dismissal meets all legal rules, president says. Political soap opera fascinates nation.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — President Nelson Mandela on Friday fired his estranged wife, Winnie, from the government for the second time in yet another bizarre episode of the nation’s most closely watched political soap opera.

The latest dismissal came just two days after Mrs. Mandela had humiliated the president by using a legal loophole to win back her job as deputy minister for arts, culture, science and technology. He first sacked her March 27 after she defied orders not to travel abroad and repeatedly disparaged government efforts to aid the poor.

This time, the president took pains to meet legal requirements and thus claimed victory in the latest round of the War of the Mandelas.

“The overriding consideration . . . is what the president believes is necessary in pursuit of good government and the interests of the country as a whole,” Mandela said Friday in a statement.

As before, he declined to detail his reasons for dumping the woman local newspapers have dubbed the “Queen of Controversy.”

“There is no requirement for reasons behind such decisions to be made public,” Mandela said. “Such a precedent would impact negatively on the ability of the executive to govern well or wisely.”

And as before, the president said he hoped his ex-mate had learned a lesson.

“I sincerely hope that this action will help her to reflect and improve on her conduct in positions of leadership,” he said.

Mrs. Mandela had no immediate comment. She rarely talks to the press, although at a township rally last weekend she bitterly attacked several reporters by name and the media in general for distorting her views and actions.

For all the drama, it is perhaps a telling sign of the progress here that a nation that once appeared to teeter on the edge of race war now is mesmerized by the personal and political battle between the 76-year-old president and his 58-year-old former spouse.

The couple separated in April, 1992, after she had been publicly linked to an extramarital affair.

Some of the president’s closest friends partly blame him for the breakup, asking why he is unable to forgive his wife when he has forgiven the apartheid-era rulers who imprisoned him for 27 years and oppressed the black majority for far longer.

But Mrs. Mandela has tied the president and the ruling African National Congress in knots for years.

Once a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, she was found guilty in 1991 of kidnaping a Soweto youth who was later murdered by one of her bodyguards. She resigned as head of the ANC social welfare department in 1992 amid allegations of missing funds and was later removed from all official ANC positions.

Mrs. Mandela was politically resurrected in December, 1993, however, when she was elected to head the ANC Women’s League, a party position that guaranteed her a seat in the first all-race Parliament.

Her rehabilitation appeared complete after Mandela appointed her as deputy minister after he took office last May, and she was the fifth-highest vote-winner for the ANC’s Executive Council at a national conference in December.

But several new scandals this year, from her repeated attacks on official policies to a police probe of alleged bribe-taking and influence-peddling, highlighted anew her questionable judgment and divisive style of politics in a culture that values consensus and loyalty.

At least one political analyst, Robert Schrire of the University of Cape Town, argued that Mrs. Mandela’s latest challenge to authority, which initially forced the president to back down, may have caused the most damage yet.

“She essentially declared war on the ANC,” he said. “She has embarrassed the party. She’s been disloyal to the party. That’s the ultimate sin.”

Despite widespread speculation that Mrs. Mandela may try to mobilize her support in squatter camps and townships to run for president in 1999 elections, Schrire said she had so angered members of the ruling elite that her political future was probably nil.

“No way she can convert populist support to electoral support,” he said.

The affair also hurt Mandela’s heir apparent, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. He was assigned to deal with Mrs. Mandela, and the botched handling of the first firing clearly undermined his political standing.

Mrs. Mandela had claimed in a lawsuit that her first firing was illegal because the president had not consulted Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu chief who heads the Inkatha Freedom Party and is in the Cabinet. The constitution requires consultation with leaders of all major parties in government.

On Thursday, the president made it a point to meet with Buthelezi and Deputy President Frederik W. de Klerk, whose National Party is the third partner in the coalition government.

In a statement Friday, the National Party said the affair had hurt South Africa’s image and that it hopes the “distasteful saga . . . is now over.”

Buthelezi told state television the dismissal was regrettable.

“I have known them as a young couple many years, decades ago,” he said. “For me . . . it is a very sad thing that things have come to this.”