Winnie Mandela (20 page)

It was the harshest penalty handed down by any South African court to date for political offences, but as always in the face of the treatment meted out to them by the authorities, neither Winnie nor Nelson showed any public emotion – they would not give the government the satisfaction of knowing how deep their anguish was. Her head held high, Winnie joined the crowd in singing ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’, and in a statement to
New Age
she said: ‘What has happened should take none of us by surprise, for we are faced with a vicious oppressor. I will continue the fight as I have in all ways done in the past. I shall certainly live under great strain in the coming years, but this type of living has become part and parcel of my life. The greatest honour a people can pay to a man behind bars is to keep the freedom flame burning, to continue the fight.’

She honoured her word. From that moment on, she dedicated her life to keeping the cause – and Mandela’s name – alive.

Surprisingly, Walter Sisulu was given an even heavier six-year sentence. While he was on bail pending appeal, the ANC decided that Sisulu would take Mandela’s place, go underground and lead the struggle.

On the day he was sentenced, Nelson gave Winnie a letter he had written, filled with loving reassurance and encouragement. She would describe it as the most wonderful message any wife could ever hope to receive. He urged her to be brave, and reminded her that in his absence she would occupy an important position in the community. He also warned her that she would have to face many problems without his support, and that there were people who would try to trick her and cause her downfall. Winnie cherished the letter and read it anew whenever her spirits flagged. When the security police confiscated it during one of the raids on her home, she was shattered by the loss. Despite repeated appeals the letter never was returned to her, but the words were ingrained on her mind, and in the years ahead she constantly drew on their comfort and inspiration. And she frequently recalled her husband’s warnings.

The police would spare no effort to undermine Nelson Mandela and the ANC, and they identified Winnie as a useful tool after seeing how easily she had been lured into the elaborate ring of informers and false friends they set up to ensnare her, starting with Dinath and Maude. Shortly after Nelson’s arrest in August, the police ‘dirty tricks’ brigade had started a rumour that Winnie was having second thoughts about tying herself to a man so much older than her, and had made a secret pact with the communists to sell him out. The next rumour, started by a police informer and quickly spread by township gossips, was that she had married Mandela only for his name, and wanted to divorce him. Winnie was outraged by the malicious lies, but took comfort in the fact that those who knew her would attach no importance to such absurdities.

Among the people who had entered Winnie’s circle was Mary Benson, a British writer who had acted as a secretary for both Albert Luthuli and the Treason Trial Fund, and would later become one of Mandela’s biographers. As a result of her close ties with the ANC, Benson was facing deportation, and wanted to do what she could to help the movement while she was still in South Africa. This included providing money for Winnie to buy a Gestetner copying machine on which she could reproduce information leaflets. When Winnie told Maude Katzenellenbogen of Benson’s generosity, Maude convinced her to install the machine at her house, arguing that the police would surely confiscate it if Winnie kept it at her own home. It was a valid point, and Winnie had no reason to distrust Maude, so she accepted the offer. Maude also suggested that Winnie use her address for mail from ANC contacts outside the country. Various pseudonyms were used for this
correspondence, since anything addressed to either Winnie or Nelson the security police were bound to intercept. Later, at one of the lowest ebbs of her life, Winnie would discover that the police had details about all the leaflets she had produced, and the names of all the people to whom her mail had been addressed.

Journalist Gordon Winter was a fully fledged state agent who insinuated himself into Winnie’s life. They had met in 1961 at a multiracial party hosted by the
Rand Daily Mail
, and Winter had worked hard, ever since, to convince Winnie that he was a white liberal who fully supported the struggle and sympathised entirely with black people. His cover as an agent of the dreaded Bureau of State Security (BOSS) was strengthened when he helped a few activists escape from South Africa, and was deported to his native England after being found guilty of ‘revolutionary activities’. This helped to establish his bona fides with the ANC in exile, and Winnie never had any reason to regard him as anything but a sympathetic friend. In that role, he obtained vital information from her, including the names of some ANC comrades and addresses to which her mail was sent. Many years later, when he was unmasked as a spy, Winter would admit that even though he was betraying her, he liked and respected Winnie, and admired her spirit.

Mandela spent his first few months in prison in virtual isolation. He was allowed no visitors or any letters for four months, and Winnie focused all her longing on April 1963, when she would be able to see him for the first time. But on 28 December 1962, she was served with a banning order that restricted her to the magisterial district of Johannesburg, prohibited her from entering any educational premises, and barred her from attending or addressing any meetings or gatherings where more than two people were present. In addition to the physical limitations on her movements, the banning order silenced her voice, as the media were no longer allowed to quote anything she said.

When news of the banning order reached Mandela in prison, he was shocked, even though he had expected the authorities to take some form of reprisal against his wife. Perhaps even more than Winnie herself, he immediately realised the full implications of the ban. He relied on Winnie to handle all their affairs, including some related to the children of his first marriage, which could be seriously impeded by the restrictions on her movements. In addition, the police would now have ample legitimate excuse to victimise her, and knowing how stubborn she could be, he feared for her safety. Concern over Winnie and the children caused Mandela to have disturbing nightmares for some time, and in due course his worst fears materialised.

Winnie’s top priority was the care and welfare of Zeni and Zindzi, as well as Mandela’s three older children, Makaziwe, Thembi and Makgatho. They had already suffered greatly as the result of their father’s imprisonment, and Makgatho,
in particular, was struggling to come to terms with his absence. Evelyn’s children had a good relationship with their stepmother, and before her banning order it was Winnie who fetched the children from their school in Manzini, Swaziland, for the holidays. After she was banned, Nelson’s friend, Brian Somana, would pick them up.

As time passed, life became a lot harder for the boys. They changed schools and could go home only once a year. When they spent school holidays in Swaziland, Makgatho was puzzled that they could not stay with the principal, Father Hooper, in his large, empty house, but had to live with his maid, whom they called Ma Mashwana. With five people in her own family, her small two-roomed house was overcrowded, but the Mashwanas became a surrogate family for the Mandela boys during the long school year. Later, Walter Sisulu’s son Zwelakhe joined them, and the boys built their own separate hut. Their lives were further complicated by the fact that they didn’t have passports. But they learned from their friends how to cross the international boundary undetected, and would take either a train or a bus to the border, walk into South Africa at night and then be taken to Johannesburg from Piet Retief by an Indian taxi driver.

Winnie’s many responsibilities weighed heavily on her, and she was grateful that she could carry on working. But the banning order complicated her life in numerous ways. In order to cope, she developed two personalities – in company, she hid her problems behind a brave face and brilliant smile, but in private she grew increasingly anxious and lonely. Winnie had never really been alone in her life, surrounded first by her own family, then by friends and fellow students, and, most recently, the throngs of people that gravitated to her after her marriage to Nelson. At times she feared the loneliness would drive her mad, and she tried to counter it by helping those in need and working so hard that she was totally exhausted when she fell into bed at night. With most of Mandela’s close associates in exile, in prison or in hiding, people in trouble often appealed to Winnie for assistance. One of them was Ruth Mompati, and at last Winnie could return the favour of Ruth’s help when she was learning to drive.

After Mandela’s arrest, Ruth was instructed to remove all the files from his office before the police seized them. Naturally, the police had then started looking for Ruth, and she went to Winnie for help. While he was on the run, Nelson had once stayed in a house directly opposite a police station, bargaining on the fact that the police would hardly think he would be hiding right under their noses. Now, applying Mandela’s logic, Winnie took Ruth into her own home, even though it was under surveillance. When Winnie left for work in the morning, she would lock the door behind her, as though no one else was home. Meanwhile, inside, Ruth was finalising what she could and referring pending cases to other lawyers. One day, a number of men arrived with a furniture truck. They said they were
from Levine’s Furnishers and had come to repossess household goods on which the instalments were overdue. Mandela had bought the furniture on a hire purchase agreement, and somehow had neglected to make provision for continued regular payments after his arrest. Winnie had received no final demand or notice of repossession, but every piece of furniture was removed. Even the linoleum on the kitchen floor was taken, and when Winnie arrived home, all that was left were books, bedding, clothing and her kitchen utensils. She fought back her tears, swallowed her pride and borrowed a small paraffin stove from a neighbour to make supper for the children. Afterwards, she spread blankets on the floor, where she, Ruth, Zeni and Zindzi huddled together.

But Winnie didn’t sleep. She wracked her brain all night to come up with a solution to this latest problem. In the morning she went to see Godfrey Pitje, a lawyer who had been an articled clerk with Nelson, and who owed him a number of favours. He agreed to lend her enough money to buy some basic items of furniture, and though it took a long time, she repaid him out of her small salary every month.

Shortly afterwards, Ruth went into exile in London, where she worked for the ANC for many years before being transferred to Lusaka. Winnie lost yet another friend, but she did not begrudge Ruth the opportunity to escape to safety, and she had left just in time. The police began raiding the house regularly, and would certainly have arrested Ruth. The yelling and bright lights shining through the windows that heralded every raid terrified the children, and it became increasingly difficult for Winnie to comfort them while strange men rifled through their possessions and made ominous remarks. But frightening and unsavoury as these early raids were, they were just the beginning of years of harassment and victimisation.

W
ITHOUT WARNING
,
Mandela was moved to Robben Island at the end of May 1963. No explanation was given to him and Winnie was not even informed of his transfer until she arrived to visit him at Pretoria Central Prison. Even then, she was told only that he had been moved, and it took a number of enquiries to find out where.

Ironically, even though he was a convicted prisoner, Nelson was in a far better situation than Winnie, who was entirely at the mercy of the security police. He had been absorbed into a system that was regulated by strict rules and regulations that dictated how prisoners were to be treated, and, in addition, he knew the law and was a well-known political figure. Mandela used these factors to his advantage, and he had barely set foot on Robben Island before making it abundantly clear that he would tolerate no transgression of the rules. He sternly told a warder who had tried to assault him that if he so much as laid a hand on him, the matter would be taken to the highest court in the land, and that when Mandela was finished with him, the warder would be as poor as a church mouse. No prison official ever laid another hand on him.

Winnie, however, was just beginning to understand how vulnerable and exposed to abuse she was. In May she was arrested for attending a gathering, but when the case was heard, she was acquitted. She had written to Mary Benson that the police had resorted to fabricating evidence against her.

In June, she was given permission to visit Nelson on the island – for thirty minutes, after a journey of 1 400 kilometres from Johannesburg and a ferry ride across ten kilometres of choppy sea from Cape Town harbour. She found conditions on the island abhorrent. The ‘visitors’ room’ was a rickety shelter built right on the shore, with double wire mesh separating prisoner and visitor. There was nowhere to sit, and she and Nelson had to stand for the entire half-hour. The worst was that all she could see of him through the distorting mesh was an outline, and they had to raise their voices to hear one another, with white warders standing by and listening to the entire conversation. They were allowed to speak only English or Afrikaans – Xhosa and other indigenous languages were forbidden,
because the warders could not understand them. And they were warned in advance that if they touched on any topic except family matters, the visit would be terminated immediately. Winnie was severely depressed when she left the island, her sole consolation that she had been able to establish for herself that Nelson was well, and that he had been glad to see her.

Barely a month after his abrupt relocation to Robben Island, Mandela found himself being whisked back to Pretoria, again with no explanation. The government issued a terse press statement claiming the move was for his own protection, because PAC prisoners on the island had threatened to assault him, but it wasn’t long before the truth came out.