Winnie Mandela (18 page)

Nelson’s life in the shadows was a frightening experience for Winnie. She knew he would be arrested if he came home, and she tried hard to fight depression and despondency. When her spirits were at their lowest, she received a visit from someone who would become a pillar of support to her. He was an Anglican priest, the Reverend Leo Rakale, and as a result of his devoted ministry, Winnie joined the Anglican Church. With religion having played such a major role in her childhood, she found her faith anew, and it sustained her in the difficult years ahead. She shared the Anglican faith with her close friend Helen Joseph, who, like Winnie, was banned, and for sixteen years suffered continuous harassment, personal attacks – including one where her gate was rigged with explosives – and frequently received death threats.

Winnie saw Nelson regularly while he was underground. It was a very dramatic period in her life, and she would wait for ‘the sacred knock’ at her window in the dead of night, never knowing when she would see him. During the first few months he could sneak home for an hour or so, but the police soon started watching the house on a twenty-four-hour basis, and it became riskier for Winnie to see her husband. Sometimes, someone would arrive at the house and order her to follow him in her car. They would drive a certain distance from the house, switch cars, change direction. Winnie usually had no idea where she was. Wolfie Kodesh noticed
that while Mandela was living with him, tears came to his eyes whenever he spoke about Winnie and the children. Wolfie arranged several visits for them, but many attempts had to be aborted for fear of detection. Because the Mandelas were so loved and respected, many of their friends were willing to take the risks involved in arranging for them to spend a little time together. Even in the police force there were loyal supporters, including a black sergeant who would regularly tip off Winnie as to the police’s plans, and tell her, for example, to make sure that Madiba was not in Alexandra on a specific night, because there was going to be a raid. Nelson and Winnie’s meetings were mostly arranged by whites who were not suspected of any covert activities. Often, Winnie didn’t even know them, but would suddenly find herself in a strange house, the residents having arranged to go out while she and Nelson met. But their friends in Soweto were also involved. One evening, Dr Motlana’s wife, Sally, received a telephone call warning her to expect a visitor. When the doorbell rang, she almost fainted when she recognised Mandela. He asked her to fetch Winnie, and she rushed over and told Winnie to make herself as beautiful as she could, because an important person wanted to see her. Sally left the two of them alone, and as she walked away she heard them laughing happily.

Mandela was underground for seventeen months, and often popped up in the most unexpected places. Once, while Winnie was driving in the city, she stopped at a red traffic light and glanced casually to the left. To her shock, she realised that the chauffeur in the car next to hers was her husband. He had pulled his cap well down, but it was unmistakably Nelson. He showed no sign of recognition, and fearing that someone might be following her, Winnie quickly looked straight ahead and drove off as soon as the light turned green.

Difficult as it was for Winnie not to know where and how he was, she only had to open the
Rand Daily Mail
every morning to find out where he had been. Some journalists had begun reporting on his activities and alleged whereabouts regularly, and readers followed his movements as they might a fictional serial. Mandela played along, and later admitted that he kept the legend of the Black Pimpernel alive by calling certain reporters from public telephones, either ridiculing the incompetence of the police or passing on information about the ANC’s plans. The security police were convinced that sooner or later Mandela would go home to see his children, and watched Winnie like a hawk. But Nelson knew better than to fall into that trap.

Among those frequently involved in arranging secret meetings for Nelson and Winnie were attorney Harold Wolpe and his wife, Ann-Marie. They had known Winnie since Mandela started courting her, and Harold greatly admired Nelson’s leadership style. In October 1961, the ANC found sanctuary for Mandela at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, a rustic suburb north of Johannesburg. The property
was ostensibly the home of Arthur Goldreich, who moved in with his family. On the surface, it was no different from any other farm in the prosperous area, but in reality, it was the headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe, or MK [Spear of the Nation], the ANC’s military wing. After fifty years of non-violent protest, the ANC had decided to launch a controlled campaign of sabotage against symbolic installations. It was due to start on 16 December with twenty-three acts of sabotage against carefully selected targets. The campaign was to be spearheaded by Joe Slovo, assisted by Goldreich and Wolpe, whose experience and expertise as the ‘extremely dangerous’ men the security police labelled them, were inadequate and seriously flawed.

Winnie and the children often visited Mandela at Lilliesleaf, an ideal setting for their family reunions. During their stolen moments together, the girls ran around and played with their father. Nelson carried Zeni through the orchard, or took her rowing on the stream. Ironically, at Lilliesleaf they had the privacy Winnie had always longed for. She cooked meals they could enjoy as a family, without interruption. It was like living in the eye of a storm, and because it was the only place where they were together as a family, Zeni came to think of the farm as home. For years after Mandela was imprisoned she insisted that her father was living in the big house in Rivonia, and kept asking Winnie when they were going home to him.

Mandela was not insensitive to Winnie’s difficulties, and he did what he could to make life easier for her. When he heard that she was having problems with their old car, he sprang into action. One day someone approached her at work with a message to drive to a particular intersection in the city. When she got there, a tall man in a chauffeur’s white coat and peaked cap opened the door, and ordered her to move across to the passenger seat. It was Mandela, in one of his many disguises, which were so effective that even Winnie did not instantly recognise him. He drove to a car dealership, and in broad daylight traded in the old car and bought another one. Then he drove Winnie back to Sauer Street, one of Johannesburg’s busiest thoroughfares, and at a stop sign got out of the car and disappeared into the throng of commuters.

But Mandela’s friends were very concerned about the lack of security measures, especially at Lilliesleaf. To the farm workers and all but the top ANC leadership, Mandela was known as David Motsamayi, a houseboy or male servant. The fact that Winnie was a frequent visitor who might be recognised by any number of people was enough to cause Paul and Adelaide Joseph to warn that they were being reckless. But the ANC in general was naive and inexperienced when it came to clandestine operations. Fatima Meer recorded that shortly after Mandela came to her home one morning, a close friend of theirs telephoned and nonchalantly asked whether Nelson had arrived. Fatima was shocked and feigned ignorance, saying there was no such person at her house. But the caller insisted that he had
dropped Nelson there a few hours earlier. Fatima again said, firmly, that there was no one by that name in her house, and ended the call. When she told Mandela, he was irate. Both of them were astonished at the idiocy of the caller, as it was assumed that every known activist’s telephone was being tapped. Mandela briefly considered finding somewhere else to hide, but in the end decided to stay with the Meers for a few days. An experienced underground operative would have left at once.

Joe Slovo said his admiration for Mandela grew while he was a fugitive, and that as South Africa’s most wanted man he took serious risks, still insisting on leading from the front. Winnie was little more than a helpless onlooker, and could do nothing except wait and see what happened next.

In December the media reported that Chief Albert Luthuli had been granted a visa to travel to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. The fact that a man who had been portrayed as a dangerous communist agitator should receive the highest accolade from the international community was a slap in the face of the South African government, and an important psychological triumph for the ANC, though it did them little good inside the country. Soon afterwards Luthuli was banished to Natal, and later died under suspicious circumstances, leaving the ANC with his maxim: ‘Let your courage rise with danger.’

The ANC was ready to raise the stakes, and Mandela, commander-in-chief of a fledgling revolutionary fighting force, prepared to start the sabotage campaign. White South Africans had celebrated 16 December as a religious holiday – Dingane’s Day – since a Boer commando defeated the Zulu king at Blood River in 1838, and it was on this day in 1961 that the ANC planned to detonate its first home-made bombs at power plants and government offices in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban. At the same time, leaflets setting out the MK manifesto would be distributed throughout South Africa, announcing the existence of Umkhonto we Sizwe. The government response was an even harsher crackdown than any in the past, and the capture of MK operatives became the primary police objective. These were dangerous times, and Winnie had to cut back on her visits to Lilliesleaf. Zeni and Zindzi were too young to understand what was happening, but Makgatho, aged eleven, had been entrusted with the knowledge that his father was on the run, and instructed never to reveal the true identity of ‘David Motsamayi’ to anyone. But keeping so big a secret could not be easy for a small boy, and one day, when Makgatho was playing with Arthur Goldreich’s son Nicholas, also aged eleven, they found a copy of
Drum
magazine, which Winnie had brought. Inside was a picture of Mandela taken before he went underground, and Makgatho exclaimed: ‘That’s my father!’ Nicholas did not believe him, and Makgatho, determined to prove he was telling the truth, blurted out that his father’s real name was not David, but Nelson Mandela. To settle the squabble, Nicholas ran to his mother and told
her what had happened. Hazel Goldreich was alarmed and told Mandela, but because plans were already under way for Mandela to be smuggled out of the country to visit various African states, and London, they decided to do nothing.

The night before his departure on 10 January 1962, Nelson and Winnie met secretly at the home of white friends in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. While he was abroad, Winnie read the daily newspapers closely, the only way she could follow his progress. He met with President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and the presidents of Sudan, Tunisia, Mali, Guinea, Liberia and Algeria.

In London, he spent time with the Tambos and an old friend from Orlando, composer Todd Matshikiza, writer of the hit musical
King Kong
. Matshikiza’s wife Esmé was awed by Mandela’s vision of the future, which she thought was nothing less than divinely inspired. She suggested he should stay in London to avoid capture, but he was adamant that a leader should be with his people.

While he was away, Nelson kept in touch with Winnie through letters that were delivered by hand, so that she never knew how the underground mail network operated. The police had begun harassing her as soon as they learned that he had sneaked out of the country, following her constantly and searching the house, looking for any shred of information that would indicate when he planned to return. Winnie told a reporter from the Johannesburg
Sunday Times
that the police searched or visited her house almost every day during the first three weeks of June, often arriving just as she and the children were about to go to bed.

Sometimes they were pleasant and businesslike, but at others they were rude and aggressive, which frightened the children. It didn’t help that newspapers reported that Nelson was back in South Africa while he was actually still in Addis Ababa. On 20 June, the police arrived at the house at 10 pm, and were furious that Winnie wasn’t home. Her sister, who was living with her, demanded to see a search warrant, but they pushed past her and ransacked the house. Agitated neighbours gathered outside, and a group of youths showed their resentment by setting fire to the police motorcycles. The fuel tanks exploded just as Winnie arrived home, and the police stormed out, firearms drawn, shouting accusations at Winnie for the damage caused.

In their determination to apprehend Mandela, security was stepped up at all border posts, but not only did Mandela elude his hunters, he managed to slip a precious cargo past them as well – the national dress of each country he had visited, as a gift for Winnie. The day after his return, she and the children went to Lilliesleaf Farm for a brief visit, but it was a nerve-wracking trip. The police were manning roadblocks all around Johannesburg, so it was decided that Winnie would travel in a Red Cross ambulance, with Zeni and Zindzi beside her, and pretend to be a woman in the final stages of labour. It was a convincing performance, complete with a doctor in attendance and stethoscope at the ready, and it worked.

Nelson had been both invigorated and inspired by his travels, and shared the experience with Winnie in detail. But they both knew time was running out. The South African government had called in the help of the British secret service to find the elusive Mandela, and Winnie left Lilliesleaf that day with a strong premonition of doom. When they parted, her eyes were filled with tears, a memory he carried with him for many lonely years. It was seventeen months since he had gone underground, and this would be their last private moment for almost three decades.

Winnie left Lilliesleaf with her wardrobe of authentic African clothes, and the next day Nelson went to Durban for a meeting with Chief Luthuli and MB Yengwa. He spent his last day of freedom for more than twenty-seven years with a number of friends, including Ismail and Fatima Meer, JN Singh, Dr Monty Naicker and Yengwa, at the home of photo-journalist GR Naidoo. They ate and drank merrily, discussed politics and laughed a lot, not least over the fact that the police were hunting for Mandela everywhere, yet here he was, openly partying with friends. Some of those closest to Mandela at the time thought he had grown so careless that he seemed almost to be inviting arrest. Dennis Goldberg pointed out that the stress of living a secret life sometimes became so great that people subconsciouly made deliberate mistakes in order to put an end to the subterfuge. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that on Sunday 5 August, while travelling back to Johannesburg, Mandela was apprehended by armed police in three vehicles. It was just two hours since Mandela, in his customary role as chauffeur, had left the home of the Meers with his ‘employer’, Cecil Williams. The police had the registration number of the car, and any protest was futile.