Winnie Mandela (16 page)
In the early hours of 30 March, a familiar banging on the door heralded a police raid on the Mandela home. Half a dozen armed security policemen turned the house upside down, confiscating practically every document in the house. Nelson had been compiling a family history and legends about his ancestors, and even those notes were taken. He never saw them again. The police had no warrant but they arrested him and refused him permission to call his lawyer. When Winnie asked where he was being taken, they would not tell her.
After less than two years of marriage, Winnie was alone, her husband in jail, and any semblance of normal life was gone forever.
Before Tambo left the country, he asked a friend, Hymie Davidoff, to close down the practice of Mandela and Tambo. Davidoff sought permission from the authorities for Mandela to assist him over weekends, and, astonishingly, they agreed. Every Friday afternoon he was driven to Johannesburg from Pretoria by a Sergeant Kruger, and back again on Monday morning, having slept in the police cells at Marshall Square. Kruger was a decent man who treated Mandela well and shared with him the snacks he bought to eat during their weekly drives. Mandela was surprised that Kruger left him alone in the car while he went into a store, and at first thought how easy it would be to escape and be swallowed up by the crowds of people on the pavements. But an unspoken code of honour developed between
the two men and Mandela never broke it, not even when Kruger relaxed his guard to the extent of allowing his prisoner to go to the café on the ground floor of the office building on his own. Kruger also allowed Winnie to spend time with Mandela at the office on these working weekends.
She visited her husband in Pretoria several times, taking Zenani with her. She was just over a year old, starting to walk and talk, and some of the prison warders allowed her father to hold and cuddle her. At the end of each visit, Winnie had to brace herself to wrench an unwilling, and clearly puzzled, Zeni from her father and go home without him.
With the ANC now banned, Winnie’s positions had ceased to exist, but the organisation simply went underground and there was still a great deal of work to be done. Indeed, officials who had escaped detention took on the additional responsibilities of those in prison, and were busier than ever. Among those arrested was Joe Matthews, who had been asked by Nelson to give Winnie driving lessons. In his absence she decided to teach herself, practising in the driveway of her home. During one such session, she demolished most of the garage door but, undeterred, decided the next step was to drive in traffic. She thought it prudent to have someone accompany her, and Mandela’s secretary, Ruth Mompati, was her first choice. They were good friends, and Ruth was pleased when Winnie offered to drive her to work one morning.
Within minutes of lurching into the heavy peak hour traffic, however, Ruth realised that Winnie had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Ruth clung to her seat in terror as other drivers hooted furiously and Winnie dodged one car after another. Against all odds, they reached Ruth’s office safely, but she told Winnie she would never set foot in a car with her again. Somehow, Winnie persuaded her to change her mind, and Ruth acted as navigator for the learner driver until she was ready to take her driving test. But she needed a licensed driver to accompany her to the test grounds, and since her friends were either at work or in jail, she asked a pump attendant at the filling station where she had become a regular customer to go with her. Nelson was both surprised and pleased when he learned that she had passed the test at her first attempt, though he was less happy, when he finally arrived home, about the state of the garage door. Three years later, the car that had survived Winnie’s driving lessons was destroyed when someone planted a bomb in it. The perpetrator was never identified.
The government crackdown had left little doubt that Oliver Tambo would have to remain in exile for an indeterminate time, and the ANC had to find a way for his wife, Adelaide, and their two small children to join him. Winnie was closely involved in planning their escape, but found it distressing and emotionally draining. Adelaide was one of her dearest friends, and she dreaded losing her. It took three months of careful planning before Adelaide, on foot and disguised as a peasant
woman, crossed the border into Swaziland with her daughter Thembi and son Dali, just eighteen months old. She had no travel documents and had to wait for almost a month before Ghana’s president, Kwame Nkrumah, sent an aircraft to fetch her.
They had to land in the Belgian Congo (later renamed Zaire) to refuel, and Adelaide unwittingly became embroiled in what was about to erupt into a full-scale civil war. Following independence from Belgium at the end of June 1960, the rich mining province of Katanga had seceded from the Congo, and Belgian troops had been flown in to restore order and protect hundreds of Belgian nationals. Heavy fighting broke out, and in July, 4 000 troops from Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco and Tunisia were airlifted into the strife-torn area under the banner of the United Nations to support the Congolese forces.
In the midst of this escalating crisis, the aircraft carrying Adelaide Tambo and her children landed in Katanga. Crew and passengers were immediately arrested, and Adelaide spent an anxious night in a Congolese prison. The next day, highlevel negotiations secured her release and she was able to continue her journey to Ghana. Finally, three months after leaving South Africa, she joined her husband in London, and while Oliver went about setting up the external wing of the ANC, she found a job as a nursing sister and made a home for her family. It would be many years before she and Winnie saw one another again, but they remained close friends, and Adelaide was one of Winnie’s staunchest supporters.
Mandela was still in detention when he was called to give evidence at the Treason Trial in August 1960. The entire country was riveted by what he had to say, and even Winnie, who had a good idea of how he would present his case, was captivated. Many political analysts believe that the way he set out the ANC’s policies and actions during his evidence in chief and cross-examination established his reputation and leadership qualities, not only in South Africa, but around the world. At the end of August, the five-month-old state of emergency was lifted, and Mandela was released.
Winnie revelled in the joy of having her Madiba home again. The Treason Trial continued, but she cherished the evenings, when he came home. For a while their lives were almost normal, but time was running out for Soweto’s uncrowned royal family. One Sunday morning, Adelaide Joseph witnessed at first hand the adulation of the ordinary people for Mandela. Driving through the township, Nelson’s car was recognised immediately by men, women and children, who waved and shouted in greeting, calling out ‘Mandela! Mandela!’ as he passed. Adelaide said later that it was then that she knew, without a doubt, that he was the man South Africa needed, and she was always struck by the fact that neither Nelson nor Winnie ever forgot ‘the people down at the bottom’. During Mandela’s long years in prison, Winnie made it her business to visit the families of other political detainees and
arrange financial aid for them because, she said, they were not the Mandelas or Sisulus, but the ordinary, ‘forgotten’ people.
In stark contrast to Verwoerd’s predictions about the Bantustans, resistance to apartheid was intensifying. In Pondoland, both the Mandela and Madikizela families felt the impact. In parts of the region, people suspected of collaborating with the government were assaulted, some even killed. In Tembuland, resistance that had first become apparent in 1955 was growing fiercer. Winnie was especially concerned about the situation in Pondoland, where a serious uprising was brewing. The media essentially ignored the growing tensions, but visiting relatives and friends brought first-hand accounts of the unrest, and the news spread via the ‘bush telegraph’.
In Bizana and other troubled areas, many people vehemently opposed the establishment of a Bantu Authority to replace the traditional Bunga. Pondo tribesmen were deeply suspicious of the Bantu Authority, which intensified when the government amended the Land Trust Act and allowed the Bantu Authority to decide on the distribution, zoning and fencing of land. Grazing lands were divided arbitrarily, and in some cases fences were erected across graves in family cemeteries. This was sacrilege to the Pondo and caused widespread outrage. Another highly emotive issue was the culling of cattle, which, the Bantu Authority claimed, was essential to promote conservation. But the Pondo found it difficult to understand why the number of cattle they could own had to be limited, while no such restrictions were placed on white farmers. There was also widespread unhappiness over the forced resettlement of large numbers of people to areas that were already overcrowded, and where soil erosion was a serious problem. It seemed to fly in the face of the supposed concern about conservation. People had farmed on the same land for generations, and became convinced that the Bantu Authority wanted to force them off the land to work as cheap labour on white farms and in the mines. In an attempt to halt the resistance, the Bantu Authority offered financial compensation to tribal chiefs to enforce the legislation. Some chiefs agreed, and this, in turn, gave rise to even greater opposition. A number of Pondo tribesmen formed a body called Intaba, which means mountain, to organise opposition to the Bantu Authority.
Intaba’s first step was to persuade the compliant chiefs and headmen to reject the scheme. Those who refused or hesitated were given a chilling ultimatum: resist the Bantu Authority, or face death. Twenty chiefs who refused to support Intaba were killed and their kraals burned.
The ANC supported the tribal hierarchy and issued a statement denouncing chiefs who supported the Bantustan policy. The government was well aware that the cooperation of the tribal leaders was crucial to the success of their policies,
since rural people were generally inclined to follow the lead taken by their chiefs. At the same time, support at grassroots level would be an important psychological victory for apartheid over the ANC, and might even lead to a wedge being driven between the organisation and the tribal leaders. Chiefs were told that the ANC planned to usurp their power, but that if they supported the government, their authority would be assured.
Many chiefs could not resist the promises and monetary rewards offered by the government, and the majority of them eventually declared support for the Bantu Authority. The chiefs arranged to be protected by armed guards, and throughout Pondoland the atmosphere was one of anarchy. When ordinary tribesmen turned on their chiefs, burned down their huts and assaulted or killed them and their supporters, the government retaliated by detaining hundreds of people. Many were imprisoned for up to ten years, and twenty were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mandela was mortified when his kinsman and close childhood friend, Chief Kaiser Matanzima, joined the ranks of the government supporters, sending a raiding party to Rwantsana where, under police protection, they set fire to dozens of huts. From the moment she first heard about the revolt, Winnie was deeply concerned about her family, but not for a moment did she think Columbus would side with the Bantu Authority. It therefore came as a terrible shock when she received news to the contrary.
Jeremiah, the young migrant worker who had been one of her travel companions when she went to Johannesburg in 1953, always called on Winnie when he returned from Bizana, bringing news and messages from home. During the Pondoland unrest, he came to tell her that tribesmen had met at Ngquza Hills to consider action against Chief Botha Sigcau, and armed resistance against the government. The authorities sent a heavily armed police contingent to break up the meeting. According to Jeremiah, the tribesmen had surrendered and offered a white flag, but the police opened fire on them anyway with machine guns, shooting many in the back as they fled. At least thirty men were killed, though official statements claimed that only six had died in what was described as ‘tribal unrest’. The rest fled into the forests, some with bullet wounds, and regrouped.
Ultimately, after many bloody clashes, Intaba prevailed, and again warned chiefs against cooperating with the government. A group within Intaba, called the Horsemen, carried out the revenge attacks, and chiefs who ignored the warnings were sent a final message – the Horsemen are coming – before Intaba acted against them. Those who escaped fled to hastily erected refugee camps in Bizana and Umzimkulu.
Jeremiah’s news was bad enough, but then he told Winnie the worst: Columbus had been involved. Intaba had wanted to use his buses to travel to the meeting,
but he refused, citing his job with the Education Department as the reason he could not help them. They saw his reluctance as support for the government, and branded him a collaborator. Intaba hijacked the buses and forced the drivers to take them to the meeting, and now Winnie’s family feared that Intaba would kill Columbus.
Winnie listened to Jeremiah with a sinking heart. She accepted that her father had been placed in an impossible situation due to his job as a teacher, but she was worried about his safety. Columbus knew he was a marked man, however, and took precautions to protect his family. One night, while he was working in his study, the Intaba Horsemen came. Columbus, Hilda and other family members managed to escape and hide in the garden until they left, but Makhulu, old and frail, could not. She was asleep when the attackers, angered at not being able to find Columbus, beat and stabbed her before setting her hut alight. Amazingly, she survived, but she was paralysed from the waist down and died fairly soon after the attack.
Winnie was inconsolable when she heard that her beloved grandmother had become a victim of the violence. The unrest in Pondoland continued, and nearly 5 000 people were arrested. Intaba called a boycott of white shops, and Pondo and Tembu tribesmen travelled to Johannesburg to inform the ANC about the situation in the Transkei. They told Mandela that the chiefs were seen as acting out of self-interest and greed, and that supporters of Matanzima and Sigcau were waging terror against those who opposed the Bantu Authority. They feared that Matanzima would depose Sabata Dalindyebo, the paramount chief of the Tembu, and take control of the Transkei.