Winnie Mandela (6 page)

Vivid and painful images of Gertrude’s dying did nothing to restore Winnie’s faith. ‘As I watched her lips move and her tear-drenched face, I hated that God who didn’t respond to her and who instead came for her when she was breastfeeding a three-month baby boy – my brother Thanduxolo.’
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Still a child herself, Winnie had to prepare the wailing baby’s bottles and try to comfort him, spending hours at night rocking and cuddling him, and trying to lull him to sleep with sugared water.

When Gertrude’s last moments drew near, the elders gathered round her bed, and Winnie and Nancy sought refuge in another rondavel, clinging to one another in fear. Just before dawn, a bone-piercing shriek cut through their sleep, and their older sister Irene burst through the door, sobbing.

In keeping with tribal custom, relatives came from near and far, the outer walls of the Madikizela home were painted with black ochre and the windows smeared with white. Black funeral dresses were made for the children on their mother’s sewing machine, and their heads were shaved. Bewildered and weeping much of the time, they could do nothing but watch the preparations for their mother’s funeral. The whole district turned out for the occasion, and Winnie had never seen so many people. The church was too small and the service had to be held outdoors. All the children sat beside the coffin, which was draped in black. On it lay Gertrude’s church uniform, folded as neatly as if she had done it herself.
The girls were crying bitterly, and Winnie thought their sorrow would never end. After the service the coffin was carried to the Madikizela family cemetery at the far end of Makhulu’s garden, where all the graves were marked with simple white crosses. Winnie, shivering with dread, clung to Nancy, unable to watch as the casket containing her mother’s body was lowered into the ground.

Two oxen and a number of sheep were slaughtered to feed the mourners. In a strangely hushed atmosphere, the family elders sat near the cattle kraal, heads bowed, while the women huddled and whispered on the grass.

Relatives came to assist Columbus with the care of the children and to help with the baby. They meant well, but had no idea how to run Gertrude’s well-ordered home, and soon the household was chaotic. Columbus, stricken by his loss, didn’t notice for a while, but as soon as he recovered from the initial grief and realised what a state his home and family were in, he immediately took action. It was almost unheard of for a Pondo father to bring up his own children, but he informed the family that this was his intention, and sent all the well-meaning relatives back to their own homes. The children took responsibility for tasks their mother had trained them to perform, and gradually Gertrude’s orderly household was restored.

But their lives were changed forever. Nancy went to live with an aunt, Irene, and her brother Christopher returned to boarding school. Winnie remained at home with her younger siblings, the baby and her father. Columbus’s sister had come to live with them to take care of the household, but Winnie still had to care for the baby.

If there was one positive consequence of the tragedy, it was that Columbus inevitably grew closer to his children. Winnie washed his clothes in the river and continued to help him with the farming. Acknowledging her support, he would bring her the
Farmer’s Weekly
to read when there were articles relevant to their activities. When he had to go to Umtata for meetings of the Bunga, she missed him terribly. The other children would never entirely lose their awe of their father, but Winnie confided in him and turned to him for advice on everything. Columbus depended on her a great deal as well. With her older sisters away at school, Winnie assumed many of her mother’s duties. The baby cried constantly and she tried her best to comfort him, fed him his bottle, rocked him to sleep and even took him and her youngest sister, Princess, along when she did her chores in the fields, carrying one on her back and the other in her arms.

Her days filled with adult responsibilities and chores, Winnie had little time to grieve for her mother. But at night, Gertrude’s death haunted her in dreams and nightmares.

T
HE NEWS THAT
World War II had ended was brought to eMbongweni by a truck driver, who told the Madikizelas that there were big celebrations in the streets and town hall at Bizana. The children begged Columbus for permission to go and join in the merriment, and when he agreed they clambered onto the back of the truck, laughing and chattering with excitement.

But eMbongweni was sheltered from the realities of life in South Africa. To their shock and disappointment, they found the town hall doors barred, and were told the celebrations were for whites only. For Winnie, being shut out was like a physical blow to her stomach, but the children could do nothing except peer through the windows at the celebrations within. White children and their parents, wearing their Sunday best, were eating and drinking, celebrating to the music of a band. Uneasy about the black children looking longingly through the windows, some of the whites threw fruit and sweets onto the ground outside, and the children scurried to pick the treats up from the dirt.

It was Winnie’s first experience of black–white relationships in South Africa. Deep in her mind she heard the echo of her father’s words about the injustices towards blacks, and afterwards she began to notice that his neatly pressed suits and darned shirts were shabby in comparison with the clothes worn by white officials who came to the school. Reminded of the losses suffered by her people in the Xhosa wars and fired by youthful indignation, she made a resolution to start where her ancestors had left off, and get back her land.

Columbus’s passionate lessons about Xhosa history stirred anger among his pupils and a determination to work for change – emotions that were the forerunner of their political consciousness. During music lessons, he taught the children rousing patriotic songs. One was about the founding of the African National Congress (ANC) in Bloemfontein in 1912, and Winnie remembered the words for years after she had left school.

Columbus also taught them other songs about the history of the Xhosa people, songs that had been written by traditional composers, and at home Winnie listened to the songs her brothers had learned from the elders about the contract workers
who went to work on the mines, and their sadness at having to leave their homes and families behind.

Whites who mistook the dignity and respect of tribal blacks for docility and subservience could not have been more wrong. Increasingly, black parents were realising that their children had to be educated if they were to have a future in the changing world. This often required back-breaking sacrifices by black families, because education was neither compulsory nor free, as it was for whites. Nevertheless, many black parents were prepared to endure whatever hardship was required to pay for their children’s education.

Winnie was fortunate that in her family an education was taken for granted, and the highlight of her existence continued to be the hours she spent at school. She took to heart her father’s repeated admonitions on how important it was to have a proper education and, moreover, to speak fluent English. But when she was in Standard 6, the highest class at her father’s school, her education was interrupted when Columbus told her he had been instructed by the department to close down the senior class because the school was overcrowded. With immediate effect, Standard 6 would become the responsibility of secondary schools, and Columbus’s school would only offer classes up to Standard 5 in future. Winnie and all the other senior pupils would have to leave at once.

Winnie was distraught. It was March, close to the end of the first term, and all the secondary schools in Bizana and neighbouring Ndunge were full. Columbus decided Winnie could work on the lands until the start of the next school year. She was heartbroken, but would not have dreamed of questioning her father. Every day for the next nine months she walked the long distance to a little stream to fetch a drum of water for cooking and washing, returning with the container balanced on her head, a difficult feat learned at an early age by all young black girls in rural areas. Winnie also herded cattle and sheep, milked the cows, tended crops and helped with the heavy work of preparing the fields for planting. There was no division of labour on grounds of gender – in fact, black women traditionally performed the lion’s share of manual labour, and still do, in rural areas. Winnie toiled industriously, waiting patiently for the year to pass until she could return to school and complete her education.

Luckily for her, Bantu Education – which was inferior in every way to that of the whites’ – was not introduced until the early 1950s, and she thus received as sound an education as any white child at the time. The standards were high and all schools followed the same syllabus, with an emphasis on academic subjects such as Latin, English, chemistry, physics and mathematics. With the introduction of Bantu Education, standards for black children dropped dramatically, with fewer subjects being taught and with a more parochial focus. Pupils no longer learned about the outside world, and over time fewer blacks were taught to speak proper English.

Amid the demands of daily life, the trauma of Gertrude’s death began to ebb, and her family gradually came to grips with the changes her loss had brought. Columbus struggled to feed and educate his nine children on a less than adequate salary, and worked hard to supplement his income from his farming enterprises. Between teaching and caring for his family, he had time for little else. But in their closed community it was inevitable that he, an attractive and educated man of influence and means, a man with status – and a widower to boot – would be noticed by the eligible women.

A new teacher, Miss Jane Zithutha, joined his school, and soon began to single Winnie out, spoiling her and giving her sweets. Then she started giving Winnie letters for Columbus. When Winnie told Makhulu, her grandmother nodded knowingly, deep in thought. Miss Zithutha rented a room about a kilometre from Winnie’s home, and one day, without warning, Columbus asked Winnie to go and live with her, because she was lonely and uneasy about living alone. When Makhulu heard this, she again nodded knowingly.

But Miss Zithutha would not become Mrs Madikizela. Nature at its most terrifying would prevent that. One day, while a fierce storm was brewing, Makhulu told Winnie to fetch the cattle from the field. The clouds were darkening fast, and in the distance there was thunder and lightning. As Winnie approached the kraal, there was a resounding explosion and a blinding flash. She heard Miss Zithutha scream as the tree in front of her hut crashed and fell on the structure. Within seconds the hut was enveloped in an orange blaze. Columbus was running and shouting, trying to get water to put out the fire, but it was too late, and Miss Zithutha was dead.

With their lives having barely settled back into a pattern after the untimely deaths of Vuyelwa and Gertrude, the Madikizelas were once again plunged into tragedy, with conflict soon to follow. Despite embracing aspects of the Western way of life, centuries of tradition could not be discarded without cost, and the family did not escape intrigue and upheaval as modern influence clashed with tribal custom.

Winnie’s brother Christopher, having completed his studies for a teacher’s diploma, was teaching in the district. One day he arrived home unexpectedly, bringing with him what appeared to be a person, completely wrapped in a blanket. It was early in the morning, and he asked a startled Winnie to check whether his bedroom was clean and the bed made up. She did as he requested, neither protesting nor asking any questions. Then he asked her to stand guard in front of their father’s room, and slipped the blanketed bundle into his own room. Winnie was asked to prepare food and to bring water for washing to the room, after which Christopher locked the door and left. Eerily, for the rest of the day no one said anything about the person locked in the room. Winnie suspected it was a woman, but couldn’t ask anyone. That evening, Christopher came home
with one of their uncles, and they disappeared into Columbus’s room, where they talked for hours.

The next day, Christopher took the woman, still wrapped in the blanket, to another hut. Everyone pretended not to look, but Winnie caught a glimpse of a slender, fair hand. During the day a group of women went into the hut and hung a curtain, behind which the woman remained hidden for a week. During this time her relatives arrived, and had long meetings with the Madikizela elders. At the end of the week Winnie’s uncle returned with representatives from the kraal of Chief Lumayi, and it finally emerged that it was his daughter in the hut. More shocking was the news that she and Christopher were already married, despite the strict convention that children did not marry without their parents’ blessing.

Winnie was too young to be told why there had been no wedding, with the compulsory family tradition of a church ceremony and the bride in a white dress and veil. But there appeared little else to do except celebrate the strange marriage. An ox was slaughtered, and the young, very beautiful bride emerged from behind the curtain in a long green printed robe and elegant traditional headdress. She was fair skinned, as Gertrude had been, but Columbus appeared not entirely happy with the situation, and Christopher and his bride soon left and set up their own home. Winnie surmised that her father was probably upset because they had eloped and married without consulting him. Xhosa custom dictated that marriages be arranged by the tribal elders, and it was uncommon for young people to make their own decisions and arrangements. Some years later, when she was confronted with a similar situation, Winnie would be reminded of the dramatic circumstances surrounding her brother’s marriage.

The family’s bad fortune continued. An aunt fell ill, and although they nursed her lovingly, she died. Then Winnie’s sister Irene took ill and was sent home from boarding school. She seemed possessed of strange spirits, wailing constantly and babbling unintelligibly while her body went into spasms. To prevent her from harming herself, her distressed family had to tie her to the bed.