Winnie Mandela (44 page)

Independent political journalist Max du Preez’s
Vrye Weekblad
had exposed a so-called Third Force, made up of elements of the police and military and working in close collaboration with Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party against ANC supporters in Natal. Unlike Mandela and other ANC leaders, Winnie was by no means ready to renounce the armed struggle. She continued to wear her khaki uniform in public and made several statements about fighting for freedom. But the unsavoury nature of her trial had cost Winnie some of her political following. At the ANC’s Durban conference, she was elected to the national executive, but lost her bid to become president of the Women’s League. Soon afterwards, her powers as head of welfare were curtailed amid whisperings of financial irregularities involving the use of welfare funds to pay for trips, buy clothes and luxury gifts for Dali Mpofu, a young articled clerk she had met through the Mandela Football Club’s
lawyer, Kathy Satchwell. Mpofu quit his job with the law firm and was appointed Winnie’s deputy in the welfare department, giving rise to fresh rumours that they were having an affair.

In the whirlwind of events following Mandela’s release from prison and the start of negotiations designed to ensure a peaceful transition rather than a bloodbath in South Africa, the focus was constantly on him: what he had missed, how he had changed, his expectations of the future, his remarkably conciliatory attitude towards his white oppressors, his hopes and dreams. No one bothered to find out what Winnie needed and wanted, how her life had changed or what her aspirations might be. She had received almost no public credit or acclaim for the personal suffering she had endured, or the damage it had caused, or her phenomenal courage, and from the moment she was implicated in the serious crimes involving the football club, it was as though her entire past had been erased from the public mind.

A chance meeting and short conversation with popular satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys in the early 1990s offered a brief glimpse into Winnie’s soul and state of mind. They were both on their way to Cape Town, and while waiting for the flight at Johannesburg International Airport, she recognised Uys. They had never met, but she introduced herself and gave him a warm hug. He was struck by the fact that she was smaller in real life than in photographs. They chatted amicably, and he told her he was on his way to a performance in his signature role of the fictional ambassador to the imaginary homeland of Bapetikosweti.

Uys has a self-confessed passion for shopping bags, and had collected a fine selection from elegant stores in London, Paris, Toronto and New York, in which he always carries his hand luggage. While they were talking, Winnie asked him what was in the bag he was toting on that particular occasion. ‘Evita Bezuidenhout,’ he said, explaining that the bag contained the costume, wig and cosmetics he needed to transform himself into the imperious female character.

‘Do you know what is in my bag?’ Winnie then asked. Uys said no, and she answered: ‘Mrs Mandela. My husband has been awarded an honorary degree and I have to perform the supportive wife.’

She said it with such melancholy that Uys asked if that was difficult for her.

Winnie replied, ‘I’m out of practice.’

He said she seemed lost and overwhelmed, and he felt real sympathy for her. However, from the moment she stepped off the aircraft in Cape Town and was surrounded by bodyguards and a welcoming, admiring crowd, she was ‘transformed into a kugel, and one almost lost all empathy with her’.
²

On 21 December 1991, the political negotiations that would shape South Africa’s future began in earnest. International observers monitored the process, named CODESA, with great interest. While there was bloody war in Yugoslavia and
continued violence in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the world watched with bated breath as South Africans moulded a peaceful transfer of power from the ashes of apartheid. But Mandela’s attention would again have to be divided between the crucial political developments and the high drama of his personal life. Xoliswa Falati, who had been living under the Mandela roof for some time, suddenly raised Winnie’s ire, and was kicked out. She took revenge by contacting the media and retracting every shred of evidence she had given in support of Winnie at their trial. She now alleged that Winnie had not only been involved in the torture of Stompie, but had ordered the murder of various other people, including Dr Abu-Baker Asvat.

The media exploded in a frenzy of reports and speculation about both Falati’s sensational claims and the future of the Mandela marriage. Falati’s defection had opened a veritable Pandora’s box. Mandela was accused of cover-ups and interfering with the media to prevent publication of certain stories. The ANC announced that Winnie had been ousted as head of welfare. Mandela demanded that she be reinstated. Winnie continued to be seen in public with Dali Mpofu, and when she travelled to America against Mandela’s wishes, taking Mpofu with her, Mandela moved out of the Diepkloof house. To add insult to injury, Winnie’s driver, John Morgan, also retracted the evidence he had given, and told the
Sunday Times
that Winnie had
not been
in Brandfort as she claimed, but had, in fact, led the assault on Stompie Seipei.

On 13 April 1992, Mandela called a media conference, and flanked by his oldest friends, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, announced that he was separating from Winnie. In a prepared statement, he paid tribute to her contribution to the struggle, but said that because of their differences they had agreed that a separation would be best for both of them. He said he was not parting from Winnie with recriminations, but embraced her with all the love and affection he had felt for her since the first moment they met. Tellingly, he referred to her throughout as Comrade Nomzamo, as though she was someone he hadn’t known very well, or perhaps signalling that he had already distanced himself from her.

The storm had finally broken over Winnie’s head. She became increasingly estranged from the ANC leadership, which was baying for her resignation after Mandela ordered an investigation into the alleged misappropriation of funds in the welfare department. But the coup de grâce came via one of Dali Mpofu’s former lovers, who had somehow got hold of a letter Winnie had written to him, and gave copies to both the
Sunday Times
and the
Sunday Star
. The
Sunday Times
published it, unedited, on 6 September 1992. In the letter, Winnie angrily berated Mpofu for sleeping with another woman, referred to a deteriorating situation at home and the fact that she had not spoken to Mandela for months, and, most damning of all, mentioned ANC welfare department cheques that had been cashed for Mpofu.

Four days later, Winnie resigned all her positions in the ANC, saying it was in the best interests of her dear husband and beloved family to do so, but ascribing the situation to a malicious campaign against her. A month later, Zindzi married Zweli Hlongwane, and Winnie organised a wedding reception for hundreds of guests in the posh Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg. Mandela attended the function but looked strained, and ignored Winnie. When he made his speech, he pointed out that all freedom fighters paid a costly price for their beliefs, since their private lives and those of their families were totally destabilised. One wondered, he mused wistfully, whether it was worth it.

On the political stage, however, Mandela was the star act, although his decisions often infuriated one or other faction within the ANC. When he proposed abandoning nationalisation, he was accused of betraying the Freedom Charter, but his carefully considered pragmatism scored valuable political concessions, and by December 1992 FW de Klerk was all but ready to concede to the demand for simple majority rule.

But for every step forward, there seemed to be at least one more major obstacle to overcome. On 10 April 1993, Chris Hani was assassinated by a right-wing Polish immigrant, Janusz Waluz, in a plot that included Conservative Party politician Clive Derby-Lewis. The senseless killing brought South Africa to the very brink of civil war. It was the Easter weekend, and Mandela rushed back to Johannesburg from the Transkei to intervene in the most potentially explosive situation since the 1976 student uprising. Hani had been the second most popular ANC leader in the country, and, in the aftermath of his death, violence did break out and dozens of people died, but it was Mandela, not De Klerk, who went on national television and appealed for calm. The people listened – and the world knew that South Africa had found its first black president.

On 2 June 1993, the Appeal Court upheld Winnie’s conviction for kidnapping, but ruled that she had not been an accessory to the assaults. After ‘careful and anxious’ deliberation, the court reduced her sentence to two years’ imprisonment, which was suspended, and a fine of R15 000.

It was all she needed to stage a political comeback, and by the end of 1993 the ANC Women’s League had elected her their president. Her detractors were exasperated, her supporters jubilant. Winnie was back, and not a moment too soon, from the ANC’s point of view. Campaigning for the first democratic elections began on 12 February 1994. The Inkatha Freedom Party, with a predominantly Zulu power base, and the Afrikaner Volksfront, which represented right-wing Afrikaners, announced they would boycott the election, along with the regimes still running the so-called independent homelands of Bophuthatswana and Ciskei.

The Volksfront, led by former South African Defence Force chief General Constand Viljoen, formed a brief alliance with Bophuthatswana leader Lucas
Mangope when ANC cadres launched a final push to make Bophuthatswana ungovernable. Mangope asked Viljoen to mobilise his commando of farmers and former SADF troops to put down the uprising in Mmabatho, but specifically told Viljoen not to include any members of Eugene Terre’Blanche’s ultra right-wing resistance movement, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). The AWB, however, gatecrashed what they saw as a chance to make a last stand against the hated ANC, and by their bumbling intervention put paid to any credibility the white right might have had. In the process, three AWB members who became separated from the rest were shot in cold blood by a black policeman while the world’s TV cameramen and news photographers captured the murders on film. It was the end of Mangope, of the Volksfront’s tenuous alliance with the AWB and the right-wing boycott of the election.

In Natal, however, the bloody conflict between Inkatha and the ANC continued, with thousands of people killed and tens of thousands displaced. On 28 March, Inkatha supporters bearing traditional weapons, including spears and
knobkieries
, marched on the ANC’s Johannesburg headquarters, Shell House. ANC security personnel, fearing an attack, opened fire on the marchers, killing eight. Yet again, the transition to a multiparty democracy and government of national unity teetered on the brink of civil war, but, against all odds, Buthelezi decided at the last minute to take part in the elections that ran over three days in the last week of April.

On 10 May 1994, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa in the amphitheatre at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, seat of the apartheid government since 1948. At his side was his daughter Zeni. His estranged wife was not even seated among the most important guests from both South Africa and abroad. Jessie Duarte, who ran the Office of the President with Barbara Masekela, said her heart went out to Winnie. She had waited and laboured her entire adult life for this day, and, when it came, she was reduced to no more than a spectator, snubbed in the most public manner imaginable by her husband at his moment of supreme triumph. Duarte said attempts had been made to somehow include Winnie in the main party, but Mandela would not hear of it. In his inaugural address, Mandela said he had never regretted his commitment to the struggle, and was always prepared to face the personal hardships. But, he said, his family had paid a terrible price, perhaps too dear a price, for his commitment.

Winnie would never be First Lady of South Africa, but she was still beloved and admired by millions of black South Africans. In December 1994, she was once again elected to the ANC’s national executive, even though Mandela had struck both her name and that of her friend Peter Mokaba off the list of nominees. Delegates insisted on nominating them both, and enough votes were cast to place them among the top five of the sixty-strong committee.

Winnie was also one of the 400 members of democratic South Africa’s first parliament, and perhaps hoping she had learned her lesson, Mandela appointed her Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture. But, as with the welfare department, rumours quickly surfaced of financial irregularities. Winnie’s reaction was to lash out at the ANC government, accusing them of bending over backwards to placate the whites. Mandela was furious, and demanded an apology. Winnie complied, but made it clear that she was doing so under pressure, and levelled a new accusation at the government, namely that it was undermining free speech. When she vowed after being released from prison in 1969 that she would never again have respect for authority, she clearly did not have only the apartheid government in mind.

After their very public spat, she left on a trip for West Africa, against Mandela’s express instructions, and while she was away the police raided her home, as they had so many times during the apartheid years, and confiscated a number of documents.

In August 1995, Mandela instituted divorce proceedings against Winnie. He had put his life with her behind him, and within months began courting Graça Machel, widow of Mozambican president Samora Machel, who had died in an aircraft accident fifteen years before. In March 1996, after living apart for four years, the divorce was finalised in the Rand Supreme Court. After a marriage that had endured for thirty-eight years, and survived twenty-seven years of separation, during the darkest days of apartheid and tragedy, what had ranked as one of the world’s great love stories was over.