Winnie Mandela (23 page)

The visits flew by, and it seemed like seconds before a warder barked ‘Time up!’ With six months to wait until they could next see one another, they were not even given time for a proper goodbye, barely managing to place their hands on either side of the thick glass separating them before Nelson was hustled from his chair and out of the tiny cubicle. At the end of her first visit, Winnie walked back to the ferry and crossed the grey sea to Cape Town in a daze, turning the words she and Nelson had exchanged over and over in her mind, almost sobbing when she remembered something she had meant to tell him, but had not. Her despondency was not helped at all by the fact that when she arrived home, she found the police had raided and ransacked her house – again. It was just as well that she had no inkling, at that moment, that it would be two years before the authorities allowed her to visit Nelson again.

The security police stepped up their campaign against Winnie almost immediately. She was spared the physical violence meted out to many other people only because she had become so well known that the authorities realised any evidence of assault would evoke an international outcry, but, even so, her arm was broken by two policemen who didn’t know who she was.

Adelaide Joseph’s husband, Paul, was being detained at the Mondeor Police Station, and because Winnie’s house was closer than Adelaide’s, she took food to him every other day. One day, when it was Adelaide’s turn, the policemen on duty asked her whether the black woman who sometimes brought the food was their servant. Adelaide did not reply, and when Winnie arrived at the police station the next day, the policemen asked her why a ‘kaffir girl’ was taking food to a ‘coolie’. The insults turned to pushing and shoving, and in the ensuing altercation, Winnie’s arm was broken. She did not identify herself to her tormenters, but immediately afterwards, in great discomfort, insisted on seeing the station commander. He was horrified when he saw that the woman two of his policemen had injured, was Winnie Mandela. She told him she wanted to lay charges, and he had no choice but to register a charge of assault against the two policemen. However, Winnie was later notified that the Attorney-General had decided not to prosecute.

‘T
HE FIRST WEEKS
and months after Nelson was gone,’ Winnie reflected later, ‘that was utter hell. Solitude, loneliness, is worse than fear – the most wretchedly painful illness the body and mind could be subjected to. When you suddenly realise that you are stripped of a man of such formidable stature, of whom you were just a shadow, you find yourself absolutely naked. He was a pillar of strength to me. I fumbled along and tried to adjust.’
¹

Winnie had little choice but to carry on with her life as best she could. She worked, she helped others, and she made every effort to spare Zeni and Zindzi from suffering any more than they already had as a result of their father’s imprisonment. She was determined that their lives would be as normal as possible, and that they would not be deprived of any advantages they would have enjoyed if Nelson had been around, like a good education. It had been ingrained in Winnie since childhood that education was the key to a better life, and she was determined that her daughters would not have to settle for less.

As Zeni’s sixth birthday approached, Winnie decided to enrol her in a Roman Catholic nursery school in Kliptown. She was just settling in and starting to make friends when, after four days, the nuns sent Winnie a letter, informing her that Nelson Mandela’s child could not stay at the school. Since they had known who Zeni was when she was registered, Winnie recognised the hand of the security police in the sudden decision. She had no illusions about the extent to which the authorities would go to make her own life difficult, and would suffer any measures stoically, but the realisation that her children, too, were going to be victimised brought her close to breaking point.

Paul and Adelaide Joseph saved the day, and with their help Zeni was placed in a privately run Indian kindergarten that accepted black children. But the simple act of enrolling her daughters in school would be a recurring problem for Winnie. As soon as the authorities found out what school they attended, pressure would be applied and the girls would promptly be expelled. Prohibited by her banning order from entering any educational premises, Winnie had to rely on friends and family members to help her sort out the problem time and again.

When Zindzi, too, was old enough to go to school, Winnie sent both children to City and Suburban, a school for coloureds close to her office. One of Nelson’s relatives, Judith Mtirara, was light-skinned enough to pass for a ‘coloured’, and had sent her children there. She agreed to enrol Zeni and Zindzi under the name of Mtirara – a subterfuge, but in keeping with the extended family system the children were entitled to use the name, along with other Madiba clan names such as Matanzima and Dalindyebo. In the afternoons, the two little girls were looked after by Amah Naidoo, a member of the family who had been prominent in the Indian Congress since Mohandas Gandhi had been politically active in South Africa, and the mother of Indris and Shanti Naidoo, who were both in detention.

Inevitably, the security police became aware of the arrangement, and made much of the fact that by attending a school reserved for coloureds the Mandela children were breaking the law. After dropping them off one morning, Judith was arrested by the security police and, under interrogation, admitted that she had arranged for Zeni, eight, and Zindzi, seven, to go to the school. The principal was detained, and the girls were expelled. Winnie didn’t know which way to turn, and became severely depressed.

It was her father who, unintentionally, lifted her from her despair. Her family at home had heard that she was struggling, and her brother Msuthu – the son born shortly before their mother Gertrude died, and also known as Thanduxolo – decided to go and stay with her in Johannesburg. He had matriculated the previous year and found a job in market research, and Winnie revelled in the presence of another adult in the house. But as soon as the security police realised that Msuthu was living under her roof, they raided the house and demanded to see his permit to work in Johannesburg, which he didn’t have. He was arrested and charged with being in an urban area illegally – a victim, like millions of others, of the government’s influx control laws. But because both his father and sister were prominent political figures, the newspapers reported his arrest, and headlines screamed that the Transkei Minister of Agriculture’s son had been detained.

The incident gave rise to the first and only serious quarrel Winnie ever had with her father. Columbus accused her of using Msuthu for political propaganda. Winnie, in turn, railed at her father that his decision to toe the line as a member of Matanzima’s puppet regime did not oblige his children to follow suit in selling out the birthright of their people. She was so angry that she sent him a telegram repeating what she had already said over the telephone. Hilda later told Winnie that Columbus was so distressed by the row with his daughter that he took ill and stayed in bed for a week.

However, Winnie’s anger had the effect of shaking her out of her melancholy, and she attacked both her work at the Child Welfare Society and in politics with
renewed vigour. But she still struggled with loneliness at night. A sympathiser had provided the fees for Winnie to take a degree by correspondence course, and her studies helped to fill the hours. Friends telephoned as often as possible, but knowing that Winnie’s line was almost certainly being tapped, conversation was confined to small talk.

As both the wife of the man they most feared and hated, and a banned person in her own right who had shown that she would not shy away from the fight against apartheid, Winnie remained the target of constant security police surveillance and harassment. The state did everything in its power to weaken her resolve, including repeatedly refusing permission for her to visit Mandela. Far from accepting such treatment, Winnie confronted it head on, soliciting the support of the media at every opportunity. She hated having everything she did or said automatically interpreted as a directive from her husband, and tried hard to reconcile her own views with what she knew or thought Mandela would expect. But her trusting naivety ensnared her in the quagmire of dirty tricks and double-dealing. She was often reminded of Nelson’s warnings about betrayal and traps – but usually too late. She would know great pain before learning that the underhand measures employed by the authorities were far harder to deal with than the overt harassment, and that the ANC had been effectively infiltrated by numerous spies posing as dedicated activists.

Throughout her political career, Winnie courted a fatal flaw: no one’s credentials were ever questioned, everyone’s bona fides were taken for granted.

Tongues were ever ready to wag, and it didn’t take much to start a whispering campaign. The security police were only too aware of this, and knew how easily Winnie’s reputation could be sullied. In the interest of her welfare, Mandela had asked a number of his friends to watch over her. One of them was Brian Somana, a journalist who had been detained under the ninety-day law and had written several sympathetic reports about both Mandela and Winnie. His reputation as a supporter of the struggle seemed impeccable, and Winnie not only trusted him implicitly, but often turned to him for help, and Somana was always available when she had problems.

He made no secret of the fact that he harboured great bitterness towards Walter Sisulu, who, he claimed, had persuaded him to abandon a well-paid job in the insurance industry to join the
New Age
newspaper. Not only did he struggle to make a living as a reporter, but the paper was banned and shut down soon afterwards. However, his resentment seemed to be confined to Sisulu, and he was widely regarded as being a close friend of the Mandelas. During the Rivonia Trial, when Winnie was summoned to meet with the Mandela family elders, it was Somana who drove her and Mandela’s sister to the Transkei. While there, he sat in on the frank family discussions that were also attended by one of Mandela’s
uncles, Jackson Nkosiyane. Soon after they returned to Johannesburg, Nkosiyane was arrested on what seemed to be fabricated evidence involving a plot to murder Kaiser Matanzima, and sentenced to six years in prison. Somana was also trusted enough to convey Mandela’s sons, Thembi and Makgatho, to school in Swaziland, and helped the family in many other ways.

But Somana was a police spy, and although some ANC officials suspected him of having exposed the Lilliesleaf Farm operation, no one told Winnie that, for the second time, someone endorsed by Mandela might not be trustworthy. They were either extremely negligent, or she was being set up to fall by certain elements within the ANC.

Even when Somana bought himself a new car and Winnie noticed that he seemed to have access to an unlimited amount of money, she believed his prosperity was the result of a sweet distribution business he had set up. He gave one of her sisters a clerical job in the business, and Winnie often visited the office. One day, Winnie mentioned that she had a large number of files that she needed to move from her own office, and Somana offered to transport them for her. The time they agreed on was determined by Winnie mentioning that she was also expecting someone from the ANC to collect certain political documents from her. As it happened, the ANC official came much earlier than scheduled, but at the exact moment he was supposed to have arrived, the security police stormed in and went through every file in Winnie’s office. They found nothing incriminating and left, and Winnie waited for Somana to keep their appointment. He never came, and eventually she went to his office to find out why. While she was telling her sister about the raid, a white man walked in and asked to see Somana. Her instincts honed by numerous encounters with security policemen, Winnie was convinced that the caller was one, and for the first time her suspicions about Somana were aroused. The man left an envelope for Somana, and as soon as he left, Winnie opened it. Inside were typed instructions for a meeting, with a cryptic reference to ‘the same time and place’.

All ANC officials were instructed on how to handle situations involving possible informers. Under no circumstances were they to confront the suspect, and Winnie made a special effort to treat Somana normally. But something must have tipped him off, and he began coming to her house more frequently than usual, and seemed to be probing her for information. He became such a nuisance that she asked attorney Joel Joffe for assistance, and he sent Somana a letter threatening legal action unless he stopped pestering Winnie at home.

To her astonishment, Somana’s wife suddenly sued for divorce, citing Winnie as co-respondent. She was aghast at the groundless accusations, and turned to the Supreme Court for leave to intervene, explaining that she, and various other people, had discovered that Somana was a security police informer and that his
wife’s allegations had no basis and were designed only to damage her reputation and, by extension, that of Mandela.

The divorce proceedings were halted almost immediately.

Winnie believed she had emerged with her reputation intact, until she noticed that some of her acquaintances were avoiding her. She mentioned this to a friend, who reminded Winnie that even Christ had been forsaken by his disciples. It was scant comfort, and Winnie sought solace in Nelson’s few letters, reading and rereading them when she couldn’t sleep at night.

Once again, it was Father Leo Rakale – her spiritual adviser during the months that Mandela was on the run – who proved her salvation. He spent hours with her at home and strongly encouraged her to go into retreat at the Rosettenville Priory. Winnie later said that he helped her to renew her faith, and they grew so close that Nelson appointed him as one of the children’s guardians, along with Winnie’s uncle and Dr Nthatho Motlana.

In 1965, a new and even more restrictive banning order was issued against her. The dusk-to-dawn house arrest was inconvenient, but it had not impinged on her work. Now, however, the security police barred her from movement in any area except Orlando West, where she lived. Winnie immediately understood that she would have to give up her work as a social worker. Mary Uys, director of the Child Welfare Society, burst into tears when she confirmed that Winnie would have to leave. The organisation had resisted all previous pressure to dismiss her, even though police raids regularly disrupted their work, but if Winnie could not travel to where her clients were, she could be of no use to them. She loved her job, and she and Janet Makiwane had by far the heaviest caseloads. But Winnie had never complained, and dedicated herself totally to helping those in need, even when this meant taking shortcuts to get around the ubiquitous red tape. She was never intimidated by senior officials and frequently clashed with the Commissioner of Child Welfare on matters of adoption, which were strictly regulated along ethnic lines.