Winnie Mandela (21 page)

Since December 1961, the ANC had carried out sporadic acts of sabotage against symbols of apartheid, including Bantu Administration offices, both to hurt the government and in the hope that the instability would deter foreign investors. On 1 May 1963, the new Minister of Justice, BJ Vorster, introduced the iniquitous ninety-day law that allowed security police to detain people in solitary confinement for successive periods of ninety days at a time. In practice, this could – and did – mean that political activists were held for an indeterminate period, ‘until this side of eternity’, as Vorster said, without being charged or brought to court, and with no access to family members or legal representatives. Over the next two decades, thousands of people would simply disappear without trace and be interrogated mercilessly by the security police until they offered ‘satisfactory’ information. Veteran parliamentarian and human rights champion Helen Suzman described the process as ‘torture by mindbreaking’. Among those held in detention without trial was Albertina Sisulu, the first woman to feel the wrath of the ninety-day law. The scope for abuse was self-evident, and the first death of a detainee was that of Looksmart Solwandle Ngudle, allegedly found hanged in his cell on 5 September 1963.

Amid all the signs of a renewed crackdown, the ANC was planning its most ambitious opposition yet. Operation Mayibuye would encompass sabotage and insurrection, authorised at the highest level within the movement – but rigorous questioning of detainees had given the security police enough information to plunge the ANC into crisis.

On 11 July, a seemingly innocuous dry cleaner’s delivery van drove up to Lilliesleaf Farm. A young security guard tried to stop the vehicle, but was overwhelmed by heavily armed police who jumped from the vehicle. In one fell swoop, they arrested Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and Arthur Goldreich. Joe Slovo and Bram Fischer, who sometimes went to the farm several times a day, were not there at the time, but in the days following the raid, many other key members of the ANC were picked up. Those arrested at Lilliesleaf had been betrayed by one of their own, Bruno Mtolo, and since he had been privy to Mandela’s movements prior to his arrest in 1962, many people later came to believe that he had also
betrayed Mandela. The penalty for treachery was often death, and, later, the brutal township necklace, a tyre doused with petrol, set alight around a person’s neck, would become the most frequently used weapon of retribution against ‘sell-outs’.

Four prominent ANC detainees – Goldreich, Harold Wolpe, Abdullah Jassat and Mosie Moolla – provided a triumphant respite from the general gloom within the organisation by staging one of the most audacious escapes in South African legal history. Held under close guard at Marshall Square police headquarters in Johannesburg, and with the government trumpeting the arrests as a major coup, Goldreich noticed that one of the young policemen guarding them seemed worried and depressed. He struck up a conversation with Johannes Greeff, who was only eighteen, and learned that he was desperately in need of money to pay for repairs to a friend’s car, which he had damaged in an accident. Goldreich seized his chance, and magnanimously offered to arrange for young Greeff to get the money. Greeff helped him make a telephone call, ostensibly to arrange the funds, but in reality Goldreich used the call to alert his contact that they were planning an escape. By the simple action of allowing Goldreich to use the telephone, Greeff had already crossed the line, and the prisoners were quick but careful to exploit this unexpected opportunity. They bided their time, establishing a friendly relationship with Greeff while prosecutors toiled into the night to prepare the case that would convict them, and when the moment was right, offered Greeff a large sum of money to help them escape. He concurred.

Ann-Marie Wolpe, Harold’s wife, had organised many of Winnie and Nelson’s clandestine trysts when he was on the run, and she was given the task of arranging the getaway once the escapees got outside. She arranged that a car be parked some distance from Marshall Square to take them to a safe house in Johannesburg until they could leave the country. On the night in question, everything went according to plan, but it took the four men longer than expected to make their way to the getaway car, and the driver became more and more nervous until, convinced that the plan had failed, he drove off without them. When the four fugitives arrived at the designated spot and found no transport waiting, they had to improvise, and decided to split up. Two Indians and two white men together on the streets of Johannesburg in the dead of night would almost certainly attract the wrong attention, so they took off in opposite directions.

Astonishingly, just minutes after Goldreich and Wolpe started walking, a motorist stopped and offered them a lift. Furthermore, and by sheer coincidence, he turned out to be someone they knew and trusted! He drove them to their destination and promised solemnly to say nothing to anyone about their encounter. Moolla and Jassat experienced similar good fortune when they bumped into a friend, a waiter who was on his way home from work. He gave them temporary sanctuary until they could move to a safe house.

The next day, Ann-Marie Wolpe was arrested and questioned relentlessly, but she had genuinely not known the addresses of the safe houses that were to be used, and after twenty-four hours the police released her, none the wiser about where the four escaped men were hiding.

The newspapers printed every detail they could come up with and relied heavily on speculation about the whereabouts of the wanted men. Their photographs appeared in almost every newspaper, which added to the danger that they would be found, but for ANC supporters, victory was sweet. The police were smarting from the humiliating blow the four had struck, and searched everywhere. Special vigilance was applied along all the country’s borders, which the authorities knew the men would try to cross at some point.

But the fugitives bided their time, Goldreich and Wolpe moving from one house to another until they finally took refuge in a tiny cottage. Terrified of attracting attention, they scarcely moved, and were too afraid to even strike a match in case someone saw or heard anything and discovered their presence. Finally, they were hidden in the boot of a friend’s car and sneaked over the border into Swaziland, where they disguised themselves as priests. Wolpe called himself the Reverend Eric Shipton, and they pretended to be on a visit to missions in southern Africa. This made it possible for them to charter an aircraft, and in due course the two ‘churchmen’ made it all the way to England.

Johannes Greeff never got his money. He was arrested and agreed to help his colleagues set a trap for the man who was to deliver it. But Goldreich’s friends had expected this to happen, and simply never went to the rendezvous. Greeff was convicted of helping the four men escape, and went to prison.

Winnie was alarmed when she heard that Mandela was back in Pretoria to stand trial along with the leaders arrested at Lilliesleaf. All she could think about was that this turn of events would undoubtedly lead to his five-year sentence being extended.

On 9 October 1963, the accused were taken to the historic Palace of Justice on Pretoria’s Church Square for the opening day of
The State v the National High Command and others
, later known as
State v Nelson Mandela and others
, which would for evermore be called the Rivonia Trial. Near the Palace of Justice – restored to its former glory and used again as a court of law for the first time in forty years from mid-2003 – is a statue of Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic, who fought against British imperialism and oppression of his people in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The inscription on the statue, taken from one of Kruger’s speeches, reads: ‘In confidence we lay our cause before the whole world. Whether we win or whether we die, freedom will rise in Africa like the sun from the morning clouds.’ Though the politics of Boer and black were worlds apart in the 1960s, the ANC could not have put their hopes and aspirations more clearly than the man with whose descendants they were now at war.

Mandela’s physical appearance shocked his family and friends. He had lost some twelve kilograms. Because he was a convicted prisoner he could not wear his own clothes to court like the other accused, and was forced to wear the prison uniform: khaki shorts and open sandals. It was humiliating and he loathed it. He bore little resemblance to the confident and well-dressed man who had so impressed the world with his eloquence during the Treason Trial, and even after his arrest in August 1962.

Winnie’s banning order was still in place, and she was refused permission to travel beyond Johannesburg to be in court on the first day of the trial – and to add to her distress, the police launched a raid on her home as well. The family members of other accused were also targeted, both Albertina Sisulu and Caroline Motsoaledi having been detained under the ninety-day law. Sisulu’s young son Max had also been arrested. Imprisoning and victimising the wives and children of those involved in the struggle was a very effective way for the state to apply pressure on them; many were strong enough to handle almost anything the authorities did, but the harassment of their loved ones caused great despondency, and in some cases was successfully used to turn otherwise loyal ANC supporters into police informers.

Winnie appealed to the Minister of Justice for permission to attend Mandela’s trial. He agreed, but warned that she could be barred at any time if her attendance or behaviour caused any kind of disturbance. Not for the first time, she was struck by the irony that the same government which insisted that black people had no place in ‘white’ society, and encouraged them to preserve their own culture (within their designated homelands, of course), forbade her from wearing traditional Xhosa dress to court. But the government knew full well that traditional dress was more than a fashion statement, and that it evoked a level of pride they had no wish to confront in an already volatile situation.

The case against Mandela was largely based on documents that had been seized during the raid on Lilliesleaf Farm. He had often asked his comrades to destroy any papers containing possibly incriminating information, but enough of them had survived to provide the prosecution with evidence of his involvement in sabotage and MK’s activities. Surprisingly, the Rivonia triallists were not charged with high treason, as expected, but with sabotage and conspiracy, which meant the case could proceed without a lengthy preparatory examination. Treason charges also placed a far heavier burden of proof on the state. However, the maximum penalty was the same for both treason and conspiracy – death by hanging.

The ten accused were fortunate that instead of being in the dock with them, Bram Fischer and Joe Slovo could be members of the defence team. Fischer, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment himself, came from a prominent Free State family with deep roots in Afrikaner politics. His father was judge president of the Free State, a fact that caused the government great embarrassment. He was a brilliant advocate and immediately pointed out crucial flaws in the allegations, which
implicated Mandela in acts of sabotage carried out while he was in prison. The judge rejected the indictment, thus acquitting the accused on a legal technicality.

Pandemonium erupted in the courtroom, but the jubilation was short-lived. The triallists were immediately rearrested and held while the prosecution amended the indictment. It was a scenario that would play itself out repeatedly in other cases against the government’s opponents over the next few years. In the second round of the Rivonia Trial, which began on 3 December, the accused were charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government by means of revolution, and nearly 200 acts of sabotage.

As with the earlier Treason Trial, Winnie’s emotions fluctuated between hope and despair. She and relatives of the other accused pooled their resources to buy food for the prisoners each day, and she lived for the moments when she could catch Nelson’s eye and see him smile, or for the snatches of conversation they could exchange. She also took heart from the enormous international support for Mandela, especially when the United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously for the immediate release of the Rivonia triallists and all political prisoners in South Africa.

But the prosecutor, Percy Yutar, was resolutely building a case that would warrant seeking the death penalty, and it was obvious to all the accused, and their loved ones, that they were literally on trial for their lives.

The mood in court was overwhelmingly grim, but once in a while, there were moments of amusement, too. Ahmed Kathrada became known as the court jester, responding to Yutar’s blistering cross-examination in an inimitable way. On one occasion, Yutar asked Kathrada if he knew ‘one Suliman Salojee’. Kathrada replied that he knew
two
Suliman Salojees.

‘And who are they?’ Yutar asked.

‘Suliman Salojee and Suliman Salojee,’ said Kathrada.

In their consulting room below the court, the accused often communicated by way of notes, which they read and then quickly burned. One of the Special Branch officers guarding them was a Lieutenant Swanepoel, a beefy man with a ruddy face, who was convinced that the accused were constantly hatching new plots. One day, while he was watching them from the door, Govan Mbeki scribbled a note in a melodramatic way, and handed it to Mandela. Madiba read it, nodded ever so slightly and passed the note to Kathrada, who glanced at it before pointedly taking out a box of matches, as though to burn the note. Swanepoel burst into the room, grabbed the piece of paper and muttered that it was dangerous to burn things indoors. When he had left, obviously pleased to have intercepted what he clearly thought would be a major piece of incriminating evidence, the accused all burst out laughing. What Mbeki had written was: ‘
ISN
’
T SWANEPOEL A FINE-LOOKING CHAP
?
’ Swanepoel was not amused.

During the eleven months of the trial, Winnie had little cause for amusement. It was generally believed that in the face of mounting international condemnation, the government would not dare impose the death penalty, but there were no assurances, and Winnie was deeply distressed at the thought that Nelson might pay with his life for the cause. She was under enormous pressure, having to work, take care of the children and provide as much support as she could for Nelson. She was up at dawn each day to dress and feed her daughters before dropping them off on her way to the office, where she started work long before anyone else in order to make up for the hours she spent at the trial. Whenever possible, she raced to Pretoria, then had to rush back to Johannesburg again in time to fetch the children and be home by 6 pm, as her banning order required.