Winnie Mandela (24 page)
With her career abruptly cut short, Winnie had to find some other means of support. After a long search, a furniture store gave her a job at a much lower salary than she had been used to, but just a few months later, in August 1965, she was dismissed without explanation. As with her children’s schooling, this would become a familiar pattern. It took her three months to find her next job, as a clerk at a correspondence college for black journalists, and just a few weeks for her employer to tell her the police had been making enquiries about her, and that she would only be allowed to stay on if she agreed to divorce Nelson. At regular intervals after that, he would ask her when she was getting her divorce, and eventually she was notified by the chief magistrate of Johannesburg that she had to quit the job as it violated her banning order, which prohibited her from entering any educational premises.
The employment pool was shrinking, but Winnie next went to work for an Indian dry-cleaner, who paid her R20 a week – more than either the furniture store or the college. But, three weeks later, the police arrived and accused the owner of contravening the Factories Act by having one more shoe-repair machine on the premises than he was allowed. The police offered to overlook the offence, provided he sacked Winnie, so she left.
The hunt for a way to support herself continued, but most often she was told that even if she were perfectly capable of doing a job, her political views would not allow employers to take her on board. For a while she worked as an assistant to her own attorney, Joel Carlson, for R10 a week, but even he let her go when the police began paying undue attention to his practice. Another attorney, James Kantor, had been sent a sum of money to be shared by dependants of the Rivonia triallists, but when Winnie was called to his office to be paid what she was due, she refused to take it. Some of the other wives and families were utterly destitute, and she knew that however dire her own circumstances, she could still rely on help from friends and relatives. Her next job was in a shoe store, for the princely wage of R4 a week. She could no longer afford the cost of commercially baked bread, and drew on lessons learned from her mother in childhood until she could bake the perfect loaf at home, a forgotten skill that would stand her in good stead in later years as well.
But for the most part, Winnie had to rely on the charity of well-wishers to pay the rent and feed her daughters. For a while, she took comfort from the presence of her sister Nancy, whose husband, Sefton Vuthela, had worked at the University of the Witwatersrand until he became one of South Africa’s many ‘banned’ persons. He had fled to Botswana rather than face imprisonment, and found a position as manager of the Botswana Book Centre. As soon as he was settled, he sent for Nancy and their two children to join him in exile. Winnie hated the thought of losing Nancy, but she gritted her teeth and asked an old friend, Elija Msibi, to help smuggle her sister and the children across the border.
Although illiterate, Elija was extremely wealthy, and one of the most successful shebeen tycoons in Soweto. Prohibited by law from buying any alcohol except ‘kaffir beer’, a brew made from maize meal, black people had turned to illegal establishments that opened all over the townships, where they could not only drink what they liked, but socialise with friends. The police generally turned a blind eye to the shebeens, which were also frequented by their own informers, and were a mine of information. When Winnie asked Elija to help Nancy, he readily obliged, but her departure left a huge void in Winnie’s life.
Every aspect of Winnie’s life, whether she was working or at home, alone or in company, was punctuated by anxiety. One evening, while bathing the children, she saw the outline of a man holding a firearm through the bathroom window. Her
neighbours had been keeping an eye out for trouble, and one of them spotted the man as he climbed onto boxes next to the window. They shouted, scaring the intruder off. The police were called but no one was ever arrested.
Winnie had avoided sending her daughters to safety elsewhere, but now she realised she had to take steps to protect them. The problem was how to find a school for them, when she was not allowed to travel. Once again, she turned to shebeen owner Elija Msibi, who not only drove to Swaziland to find a suitable school for Zeni and Zindzi, but enrolled his own daughters at the same institution as support for the girls.
Sending her children away was one of the hardest things Winnie had ever had to do, but she knew she had no choice. The two little girls cried bitterly when they had to leave her, and Winnie felt as though her heart would break. She always believed it was the stress of parting with her daughters that caused the hypertension and heart condition she subsequently developed.
Zeni and Zindzi were desperately unhappy at the Convent of Our Lady of Sorrows, which was run on austere discipline that left no room for compassion. Winnie had become involved in a programme to organise correspondence courses for Nelson and the other Robben Island prisoners, backed by Sir Robert Birley, a former headmaster of Eton College, who was a visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. His wife, Elinor, became friends with Winnie, and when she heard about the problems the children were having at school, Lady Birley arranged that they transfer to Waterford, an exclusive school in Swaziland with an excellent reputation. The fees were way beyond Winnie’s means, but Lady Birley and Helen Joseph organised funds to pay them. Winnie treasured Elinor Birley’s kindness and assistance, and their friendship continued long after the Birleys returned to England.
The cost of Winnie’s dedication to the struggle was mounting, but she had embarked on a journey from which there was no return. She had not chosen the quest, it had chosen her. Having grown up with an awareness of injustice, encouraged by her father’s fervour to bring about change and her own attempts to challenge the system ever since she became a social worker, it was impossible for her to turn away from the suffering and oppression of her people. Prevented from formally practising her profession, she improvised and helped those in need whenever and however she could.
Winnie’s spirit was far from broken, but she was amazed that the authorities would waste endless time and financial resources contriving schemes and frivolous charges against her, which constantly failed. It took a long time for her to understand that every incident was a cog in a slow-moving wheel that was intended to ultimately pulverise her. Once, woken at four in the morning and told that she was being arrested, she closed her bedroom door while dressing. A white policeman,
Detective Sergeant Fourie, pushed open the door and grabbed Winnie by the shoulder. Incensed by the intrusion, and without stopping to think of the consequences, she grabbed him and threw him to the floor. As he fell, he pulled her dressing table down on top of himself. Six of his colleagues waiting outside carried her bodily to a police vehicle, wearing only one stocking and one shoe, and took her to prison. Fourie’s neck was fractured, but he recovered. Winnie was charged with resisting arrest, and when the case was heard two months later, her advocate, George Bizos, cautioned her sternly that he wanted her to behave like a lady in front of the magistrate, not like an Amazon. Winnie was a calm and eloquent witness, and the magistrate acquitted her, ruling the police testimony contradictory.
For two years, Winnie had been prevented from visiting Nelson on Robben Island. In July 1966, she was finally given permission to go, but only on condition that she had a pass, or reference book. She had gone to prison in the mid-fifties rather than carry a pass, and she knew the condition was aimed at humiliating her and Mandela, who had burned his own pass in defiance. But she was desperate to see him, and capitulated for the sake of the greater good. People who saw her at the airport on her way to Robben Island, wearing a long, pale-blue dress and turban, proud and regal as a queen, could not guess at the hardships she was experiencing.
She hardly recognised the island as the place where she had visited Nelson two years earlier. As more and more political prisoners were incarcerated, facilities for visitors had been upgraded and telephones installed. But warders still monitored every word, and sessions were still limited to thirty minutes.
After the long separation, during which they could exchange only a handful of heavily censored letters, the atmosphere between Winnie and Madiba was almost strained. What, after all, could one say in half an hour after a two-year interval? He noticed that she looked thin and drawn. They touched briefly on the children’s schooling, Nelson’s mother, who was not well, and their finances. To overcome the ban on discussion of non-family matters, they used clan names and nicknames to deceive the warders. The ANC was ‘the church’, and mention of ‘priests’ and ‘sermons’ allowed Winnie to pass on valuable information about the struggle. All too soon, the painful moment of parting was upon them and the warder yelled ‘Time up!’ Winnie mouthed a quick goodbye, and then she was gone.
In truth, Madiba knew more about Winnie’s life than anyone would have thought possible, taking into account the ban on newspapers, the almost total absence of information and carefully censored letters that were part of life on the island. He knew that she had been under constant harassment since her last visit, that her siblings were being persecuted by the security police, and that the authorities intimidated anyone who gave consideration to moving into the house with her. Curiously, any negative publicity about her was brought to his attention.
More than once, when he returned to his cell from the limestone quarry where the prisoners performed hard labour every day, he would find a selection of neatly cut newspaper clippings on his bed.
Winnie’s infrequent visits to Robben Island were governed by petty and timeconsuming rules. She was allowed to travel to and from Johannesburg only by air, and thus denied the option of cheaper transport. On arrival at Cape Town, she had to take the shortest and swiftest route to Caledon Square, the main police station, to sign various documents recording her visit. She was tailed by security police along each step of the journey, and on returning from the island, she had to go back to Caledon Square and sign more papers before going directly to the airport. After her second visit, she fell foul of the law once again. It was raining and bitterly cold, and she had to make the trip from the island on the deck of the ferry, as she was not allowed to mix with the other passengers. As she stepped ashore, still struggling with the emotions stirred by the unsatisfactory and all too brief time spent with Nelson, someone called to her, asking her name and address. She ignored him, thinking it might be a newspaper reporter, but it turned out to be a policeman, and she was duly charged with failing to identify herself or report her arrival in Cape Town. She was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment on the charge of refusing to identify herself, and one year for not reporting her presence in Cape Town. All but four days of the sentence was suspended.
In Madiba’s next letter, he reminded Winnie how much he cared for her, how unbreakable the bond between them was, and how courageous she was. It was both a love letter and a reaffirmation of the emotional support she so sorely needed.
In September 1966, HF Verwoerd, the arch-enemy of the oppressed, was assassinated in parliament by an apparently deranged messenger of mixed parentage. Hope that the political situation in South Africa might improve flared briefly after his death, but his successor, BJ Vorster, who had been interned on suspicion of sabotage against the government during World War II, soon snuffed the flame of optimism by giving the police even more extensive powers, and establishing the infamous Bureau of State Security (BOSS).
Winnie consoled herself with Mandela’s credo that unjust laws were meant to be defied, and carried on with her political work in secret. The ANC was targeting the younger generation, establishing cells throughout the country, and organising study groups and lectures to teach them the organisation’s doctrines. Almost another year would pass before she was again granted permission to visit Mandela in June 1967. By then, they both knew that they could not take visits every six months for granted. Warder James Gregory later wrote that Mandela was clearly very much in love with his strikingly beautiful wife, who was always elegantly dressed and dignified. Gregory also admitted being surprised when he saw tears rolling down Winnie’s cheeks during their visits – something
he had not expected from this woman whose pride was as fierce as that of a lioness.
In the spring of 1968, Mandela received his first – and only – visit from his mother, who was accompanied by his sister Mabel, his eldest daughter Maki and youngest son, Makgatho. Because they had travelled all the way from Transkei, the prison authorities agreed to allow them an extra fifteen minutes together. Mandela was concerned about his mother, who had lost weight and looked ill. With a sense of dread, he realised that he would probably not see her again, and he was right. She died of a heart attack a few weeks later. He sought permission to attend her funeral, but was refused.
Nosekeni Mandela was buried in October 1968, and her funeral, filled with pomp and ceremony, formed a stark contrast to her modest life. She had been a quiet and retiring person, but her death was exploited by those with political motives, and her funeral became an extension of South Africa’s political battlefield. Because she had been a member of a royal house, senior representatives of the so-called Transkei government attended the funeral to honour her both as a kinswoman and the mother of a prominent political figure, albeit their rival. The police had never visited Mandela’s mother in life at her home in Qunu, but they turned out in force around her grave, to spy on her daughter-in-law, friends of her son and other family members.
Winnie was given permission to attend the funeral, and at the graveside she wept bitterly, as much for the loss of her mother-in-law as for her husband, denied the opportunity to pay his last respects to the woman who had borne him. It was three months before Winnie could visit Madiba and give him details about his mother’s illness and the funeral ceremony. It would be another two years before they spoke again – but mercifully, when they parted, neither had any idea that Winnie was about to face her worst ordeal yet.