Winnie Mandela (4 page)

His dual roles as headmaster and Bunga councillor meant that Columbus was a respected member of the community. He differed visibly from his peers. The Pondo tribesmen wore colourful blankets, but because Columbus had to wear a suit to work, this became his customary mode of dress. Gertrude kept his suits well pressed, while his shirts were neatly darned, with starched white collars. In a community where agriculture was a way of life, it added to his stature that Columbus, like his father, was a successful farmer. The one thing he was not, however, was a jovial family man.

Columbus loved his children, and they never doubted this, but in his dealings with them he maintained the aloof, stern approach of a schoolteacher. Even at home his children always rose when he entered a room, and almost never spoke to him if their mother wasn’t present. But although there were no playful antics or open displays of affection, he devoted a great deal of time to his children.

Winnie’s mother, Gertrude Mzaidume, was the first domestic science teacher in the Bizana district, and by all accounts a fashion-conscious beauty in her youth. Fair skinned with blue eyes and straight hair, her lineage was thought to include a liaison between a Pondo woman and a white trader. Gertrude was a strict mother, applying rigid discipline with as much commitment as she enforced the high standards of cleanliness she had learned from her mother. She was an ardent Christian and practising Methodist, and insisted that her children pray at least twice a day, usually in a corner of the garden where high grass had formed a protective shelter. Witch doctors were still a dominant feature of Pondo society, but Gertrude constantly impressed upon her children that Christian principles, not traditional custom, should form the basis of their lives. As a teenager, Winnie would briefly rebel against the almost fanatical religious practices forced on her by her mother, and which she didn’t understand.

Both Columbus and Gertrude had broken the mould, shunning tradition and adopting a Western way of life. Winnie grew up in an unusual environment, exposed to both the legacy of generations of traditional leaders and the dynamic pioneering example of her parents. Heir to the fiercely proud and stubbornly individual character traits of her ancestors, she was bright and intelligent, with intuitive insight and an acute awareness of her surroundings – and her place in them – from an early age. Her family and childhood were not perfect, but she had a secure and happy upbringing.

In black communities, it is customary for those of means to feed the children of poorer families, and Columbus often took in the needy, with the result that there were sometimes as many as twenty other children around the table in the Madikizela home. The littlest ones ate from large enamel dishes, up to ten of them sharing a dish, and as they grew older they got their own plates. There was always fresh meat, milk and produce from his lands, which Columbus could provide for his large household only thanks to his agricultural enterprise. Black teachers earned far less than their white counterparts, and on his salary from the Cape Education Department alone, their comfortable lifestyle would have been impossible.

Lunch was typically boiled meat with vegetables, but supper was Winnie’s favourite meal. It was known as
umphokoqo
, a porridge of sour milk and maize meal, cooked to the consistency of coarse granules. Even more than the food, however, Winnie found the gathering of families around the huge log fires magical. Flames leaped and danced against the backdrop of the dark, starry sky, and the
smoke from burning wood mingled with that from pipes puffed by the old men and women. When it grew quiet, the elders held the children spellbound with tales of wonder, old and young locked in a cocoon of contentment and tranquillity.

Winnie was the fifth of nine children. When she was born she had a brother, who was the eldest, and three sisters. As she grew, Gertrude found Winnie the most wilful and trying of all her children, and Winnie felt from an early age that she fell short of her mother’s expectations, not least because she was not a boy. Some of her earliest memories were of her mother praying to God every day for a son. As a little girl, Winnie neither knew nor could understand the intricate Pondo tribal custom that fuelled her mother’s obsession and longing for another son. She also thought of herself as the ugly duckling of the family, partly because she didn’t have the same fair complexion as her mother, but also because the minister’s wife had once mistaken her for a boy, an innocent enough error, but one that assumed huge proportions in Winnie’s mind. She resolved to satisfy her mother’s desire for a son by acting like a boy, and she enthusiastically dedicated all her energy to her cause.

Winnie was tall and strong and had no difficulty being accepted as a playmate by boys her own age. They taught her to set snares and fight with sticks, and in no time she could beat most of them in the regular stick fights. They divided into groups, climbed trees and lay in wait for the unsuspecting ‘enemy’, then jumped down to launch fierce surprise attacks. When she tired of playing with the boys, Winnie made clay toys and animals that she baked in the crude kiln built by the bigger boys. The kiln was also used for roasting the odd chicken that strayed across their path, or for
dassies
[rock-rabbits] and springhares that the boys caught in their traps.

But rather than impressing and charming her mother, Winnie’s attempts at being a boy only aggravated the situation. Gertrude often scolded her for running around with the boys, especially if she took her sister, Nonalithi, along. Winnie was desperately disappointed, but salve for her wounds came from both her father and Seyina, her Makhulu [grandmother]. Despite their disappointment at her birth, Winnie soon became the favourite of both Columbus and his mother. However, being Makhulu’s favourite did not mean that Winnie was spoilt, and she worked as hard as all her siblings at household chores. Makhulu showed her affection by telling her granddaughter many wonderful stories of legendary heroes and great victories in battle, monsters and evil spirits in the forests, and of the Bushmen, the skilful hunters and prolific painters who were all but eradicated in the early 1900s. Winnie listened in awe as Makhulu told her that their people had been living in that part of Africa for centuries before Jan van Riebeeck established the Dutch East India Company’s settlement at the Cape in 1652 – even before the Portuguese seafarers first landed on African soil in search of a sea route to India.
Makhulu enjoyed entertaining the children with her stories of how white men with blue eyes, long beards and straight hair came to Pondoland, warning the little ones that with their Bibles and their money, the strangers had come to steal their people’s cattle and destroy their customs. Her obvious resentment of the whites made a strong impression on the children.

Makhulu’s affection for Columbus and his children did not extend to Gertrude. Gertrude was a modern woman who even dressed differently from the other christianised women in the village, all of whom had settled for the uniform German print dresses and headscarves. Like their mother, Gertrude and her sister wore elegant dresses and crocheted hats. Makhulu’s resentment was further fuelled by the fact that Gertrude was a Christian, and she held her daughter-in-law responsible for the fact that her son was barred from taking more wives. Moreover, Gertrude was a schoolteacher, and when Columbus had announced that he wanted to marry her, his mother undiplomatically told him he was mad to wed someone who not only wasn’t a
muntu
[black], but more of a man than a woman. ‘Marry a wife,’ she advised, ‘not a fellow teacher.’

Her counsel was to no avail, and Makhulu never hid her displeasure over her eldest son’s choice of wife. Winnie and her siblings were always aware of the tension between their mother and grandmother, since Gertrude openly scorned Seyina’s traditional tribal values and clung adamantly to her own modern beliefs. Seyina had a very different outlook on life, dwelling on a past steeped in pagan values that even Gertrude’s grandparents had rejected, and which were a constant assault on her Christian conscience. Underlying their different views, however, was the real source of the tension between the two women: vying for Columbus’s affection.

Seyina had long since decided that the best way of dealing with her son’s ‘affliction’ was by keeping him close to her, while at the same time making it clear that she did not respect Gertrude’s position as his wife. Winnie often accompanied her mother to her special sanctuary, where she prayed to God for her family’s physical and spiritual welfare. From these prayers the little girl gathered that Makhulu’s beliefs were sinful, and that her grandmother would not be granted access to the heaven of her mother’s God. In time, she also realised that her mother never asked God to make Makhulu a better Christian, as she did for the rest of the family. And it was clear that Gertrude was concerned about Columbus, for she always asked God not only to make him a good Christian, but to save him from Makhulu’s evil influence. Since that particular prayer reaped no result, Winnie came to the conclusion that God was not paying attention to her mother’s earnest pleas.

Makhulu, praying to the spirits of the forefathers in the cattle kraal, ironically asked for much the same as Gertrude: strength for her sons, and not to be angered by the errant ways they had embraced. But her prayers also included complaints
against her sons, or requests for advice and assistance in disciplining a wayward daughter-in-law – more often than not, Gertrude.

More than anything else, Makhulu could never forgive Columbus for the constant reminder that Gertrude had brought white blood into her family. Columbus was in a difficult position. He was a Christian and an active member of the church, but he dared not openly defy his mother. In deference to her, and to Winnie’s puzzlement, he sometimes joined in the cruel jibes about Gertrude’s white blood, reminding his children that she was a
mlungu
[white].

To Gertrude’s chagrin, there were many special occasions when the ancestors would be called upon and the finest beast in their herd slaughtered as an offering. Whereas she could studiously ignore Makhulu’s private prayer sessions, these rituals almost always involved her family. Winnie found the rites fascinating, and as an adult could recall every detail: Makhulu’s chanting of the required dictum, appealing for protection, prosperity and peace, followed by the slaughter of the carefully selected beast. After the solemn ceremony the meat would be cooked and meted out to the villagers in order of seniority: the men first, then the women, and lastly the children who, their grandmother said, had their entire lives ahead and would continue to eat, while the adults were already dying.

Having eaten their fill, the adults would congregate in small groups, the men off to one side drinking beer and talking, the children listening wide-eyed and mostly uncomprehending, but totally content.

Winnie grew up in the three utterly distinct homes of her mother and her two grandmothers, and the stark differences in the personalities of the powerful women who ruled over their respective domains influenced her in specific ways and moulded her character. Her maternal grandmother, Granny, was the total opposite of Makhulu, and Winnie was both intrigued and delighted by Granny’s eccentric ways. Granny was a staunch Christian, and like Columbus and Gertrude, very active in the Methodist Church. She cooked food that was favoured by whites and sewed her own fashionable dresses, which she wore with great elegance.

Granny, the fountainhead of Gertrude’s obsession with cleanliness, applied rigid hygiene rules to both her person and her home. Everything in the house was clean and orderly, a practice inherited by Gertrude and perpetuated by Winnie, who developed an almost compulsive obsession with neatness and cleanliness. Of her many routines, Granny’s ‘toilette’ fascinated Winnie the most. It took hours each day, starting with a bath. When Winnie stayed with Granny, it was her responsibility to fetch water from the river for the bath. After drying herself vigorously, Granny would massage her skin with a preparation she made from hot paraffin mixed with melted candle wax. Then she would comb out her hair and ask Winnie to braid it in dozens of small plaits. At night, Granny would take
off her dress, carefully stretch it out on the bedframe under her mattress, and leave it overnight so that all the creases would be pressed out. In the morning, the dress was as good as new, and ready for wear.

Gertrude’s home consisted of seven rondavels and a brick building in which Columbus slept. Makhulu, in turn, reigned supreme in her kraal of twenty huts, set in a large garden with trees and sandy pecking ground for the chickens. Some distance away was the cattle kraal and Columbus’s plantation. At Makhulu’s kraal the atmosphere was always festive, with cooking, eating and drinking, and the constant coming and going of aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins. Gertrude rarely visited her mother-in-law, but Makhulu glided into what she considered to be her son’s house whenever she pleased, paying hardly any attention to Gertrude and making it clear that when she had matters of importance to discuss with Columbus, she preferred Gertrude’s sitting room. This might well have been because Gertrude’s home was so well organised, tidy and comfortable. Gertrude was forever putting things in their place, and when she wasn’t teaching she was cleaning her house. The children were assigned a multitude of chores to help maintain her high standards, starting at daybreak when they had to clean the yard, picking up everything including twigs, and sprinkle water on the open ground around the huts to subdue the dust and keep it from blowing into the house and settling on the highly polished Victorian furniture. All her life, Winnie retained stark memories of Gertrude’s uncompromising demands for order. In later years she would recall that her mother was so strict that when she sent the children to collect wood or water, she would spit in front of the fire and tell them they had to be back in the house before the spittle dried. Those not quick enough to do Gertrude’s bidding were either smacked or sent to bed without supper.