Winnie Mandela (28 page)

More than five months after their arrest, the detainees were finally due to appear in court. Swanepoel had been informed that Mandela had arranged for Joel Carlson to represent Winnie. Carlson was an old friend but also a well-known human rights lawyer, and passionately opposed to apartheid. The police knew that if they did not have to contend with Carlson, it would strengthen their position, and they plotted to have him replaced with a lawyer of their choice, Mendil Levine. Arrangements were made for Winnie to see the other accused so that they could agree to the alternative, but the carefully constructed plan collapsed. Swanepoel had been confident that, with Levine representing the accused, the case would be over quickly. However, Carlson turned up in court and told the judge that Mandela had engaged him to defend Winnie, but that he had been denied access to her and the other accused, whose relatives had also engaged his services.

Several of the detainees, including Laurence and Rita Ndzanga and Elliot Shabangu, testified that the police had tried to coerce them into accepting Levine as their attorney after Swanepoel informed them that Carlson was not available. Those who had accepted Levine said they had done so under duress. The judge ordered that Carlson be given a chance to consult with all the accused, and they all returned to court, having fired Levine. Swanepoel was powerless to intervene, and Carlson included George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson, who had defended Mandela during the Rivonia Trial, in the defence team as well.

Mandela’s long-distance efforts to help Winnie had at last yielded results. Bizos immediately obtained a court order giving all the accused access to basic ablution facilities, and Winnie was finally able to take a proper shower after six months. But she was suffering from malnutrition: she had the characteristic pallid complexion, and her gums were bleeding. She developed fevers and continued to suffer blackouts. Finally, she was admitted to the prison hospital. Carlson was concerned about her. It seemed to him that she wavered between sanity and dementia, and
he had no idea whether or not she could withstand months more of the conditions in prison.

The trial began in Pretoria’s Old Synagogue, used as an extension of the Supreme Court, on 1 December 1969. The accused had been in detention for seven months, and were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. The prosecution alleged that they had acted in concert and with a common purpose to re-establish and build up the ANC, knowing that its ultimate aim was the violent overthrow of the state. The ninety-nine counts specified that they had furthered the aims of an unlawful organisation – the ANC – by giving its salute, singing its songs, discussing or possessing its literature and ‘polluting’ the youth. The prosecution also alleged that they had revived the ANC during 1967 by recruiting members, distributing propaganda, establishing groups and committees, taking the ANC oath, arranging and holding meetings, arranging funerals of members, canvassing funds, visiting members in prison and organising support for their families, planning to assist guerrilla fighters in acts of sabotage, acquiring explosives and propagating communist doctrines. They had made contact with ANC members all over South Africa, including those imprisoned on Robben Island and in Nylstroom, and those exiled in London and Lusaka.

The evidence, however, was almost totally devoid of detail in support of the charges. Most of the eighty state witnesses were police officers or detainees who had been coerced into giving evidence against their comrades. The defence showed that many of them had been tortured and forced to make incriminating statements, or were promised indemnity if their evidence was satisfactory. Two witnesses, Nondwe Mankahla and Shanti Naidoo, were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment when they refused to testify for the state. Shanti’s brother, Indris, was also a prisoner on Robben Island, and Shanti had been held in solitary confinement for months and been forced to stand for days under interrogation. Winnie’s sister, Nonyaniso, told the judge that she had been threatened with ten years in prison if she did not testify against Winnie, and said she had been so threatened and brainwashed during interrogation that she now found it difficult to distinguish between the truth and what the police had instructed her to say. Five other witnesses for the state admitted under cross-examination that they had been tortured prior to making incriminating statements.

Philip Golding, a British national, testified that he had been assaulted and made promises of release if he gave evidence in accordance with the statement he eventually made under duress. He admitted that he had taken messages to ANC contacts in Britain. Herbert Nhlapo said he had attended meetings where they discussed the need for an organisation to take up the grievances of black people.

To the shock of all in the Winnie camp, her friend Mohale Mahanyele was the state’s key witness against the other accused. He said he had allowed Winnie the
use of a duplicating machine at the US Information Agency where he worked, so that she could print leaflets urging opposition to the Urban Bantu Council elections and to publicise the ANC. He seemed to have an exceptionally good memory, recounting contact with the accused in the greatest detail, with total recall of exact times and dates. Eselina Klaas had served two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for furthering the aims of the ANC in 1964, and was too scared to admit, even in the safety of the courtroom, that she had been tortured into revealing her role in Winnie’s scheme to aid prisoners at Nylstroom, although all she had done was distribute forms to their families to obtain personal details about them, and had one meeting in Johannesburg with Winnie and Rita Ndzanga about the plan.

Winnie was virtually the only detainee who showed no fear during the court proceedings. When asked to plead, she made a statement, saying that she had been held in detention for seven months in terms of a law she regarded as unjust and immoral, and which had claimed the life of one of her colleagues, Caleb Mayekiso, who had died in detention three weeks after the arrests. When the judge insisted that she enter a plea, she said she found it difficult to do so, as she felt that she had already been found guilty. As the case unfolded, it became clear that the state could prove only that Winnie’s group had arranged relief for the families of political prisoners, and for the prisoners themselves. After twenty witnesses had been called, the case was adjourned.

Winnie had much to think about during the two-month wait: the past, the uncertain future, the terrible months in prison. And the shock of yet another betrayal by someone in whom she had placed her faith. The list was getting longer: Brian Somana, Maude Katzenellenbogen, now Mohale Mahanyele. She had trusted all of them implicitly, and it pained her deeply to admit that they had deliberately set out to destroy her.

Winnie felt sad and hurt rather than angry at their betrayal. She wondered what motivated people to callously exploit their fellow human beings for their own gain. And what did they gain, after all? What were they getting from the security police that made it worth their while to betray her and so many others? These were the people she had believed were her friends, with whom she had shared confidences. Now, she had to wonder how many others who pretended to be her friends were actually spies and traitors. But she wouldn’t do that. The doubts would drive her insane. Without the support of her friends, she knew she would collapse. And the police knew that, too. They were trying to back her into a corner, where she trusted no one and was totally isolated, so that they could finish her off. She would not give them that satisfaction. If people she loved and trusted were going to betray her, and reward her friendship with torture and imprisonment, it would be on their heads. She was not going to change. She could not afford to.

Now categorised as awaiting-trial prisoners, the detainees were finally allowed to receive visitors, and have decent food brought in from outside. Winnie’s first visitor was the faithful Father Leo Rakale. She also received visits from family members, who brought her clean clothes and toiletries, but the intimidation continued. On returning to her cell after consulting with her legal team one day, Winnie found all her clothes strewn on the floor, covered in hand and face cream, and trampled by muddy shoes. She had no way of washing or ironing her clothes.

When the trial resumed, the defence team intended calling Nelson Mandela as a witness – which they were perfectly entitled to do, since he was named in the indictment as a co-conspirator. Whether it was the prospect of having to transport Mandela from Robben Island to Pretoria and the massive publicity this would generate, or the way the media turned their spotlight on the revelations of torture that had been exposed so far, the state case died a sudden death. When the trial resumed on 16 February 1970, the Transvaal Attorney-General announced that he was dropping the case. All the charges were withdrawn and the accused were free to go. Counsel and prisoners alike were stunned.

But, within minutes, they found themselves surrounded by police. The public gallery was cleared, and all the accused were promptly rearrested under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act on the orders of General Hendrik van den Bergh. Instead of going home, they were taken back to prison, and placed in solitary confinement yet again. Nine months after their arrests, they were back where they had started.

The police action caused an outcry, but the government ignored all criticism. The relatives of fifteen detainees applied unsuccessfully for a court order restraining the police from torturing them, and widespread protests were staged. In June, formal charges were brought against the accused again. When the second trial began in October, Winnie was in hospital, running a high fever. The defence team drew the court’s attention to the fact that all but 12 of the 540 charges in the indictment were identical to those withdrawn by the prosecution during the earlier trial, and began laboriously reading out the two indictments, word for word, to illustrate their argument. On the third day, the judge halted proceedings, acquitting the accused again, without a single witness being called. This time, they really were free to go home.

After being cut off from the world for more than 500 days, Winnie’s ordeal was over. She had spent seventeen months behind bars, thirteen of them in solitary confinement, without a shred of proof being produced of her guilt. She walked out of the courtroom in a daze, with a single thought in her mind: she must send telegrams to Nelson on Robben Island and to her children in Swaziland to tell them she was free.

Winnie only discovered years later, in Gordon Winter’s book,
Inside BOSS
, that
he had intercepted her letters, and that the government had been so anxious to convict her that they had considered breaking his cover and bringing him from England to testify against her. However, neither he nor Maude Katzenellenbogen was called as witnesses.

Winnie found adjustment to normal life after the seventeen worst months of her life frightening. It took a considerable length of time for her to accept that she was safe, and that she was not only emotionally but also physically scarred by the experience. Her skin was blotched with the unmistakable signs of vitamin deficiency, and it was a long, slow process to regain her health and self-confidence. She knew that her detractors would make whatever political capital they could out of the fact that she had finally broken under interrogation, but she also remembered that Hilda Bernstein had said of Mandela’s appearance during the Rivonia Trial that people were shocked at how he had deteriorated physically and appalled that the police had managed to reduce the proud and sophisticated man to a shadow of his former self. Winnie had been exposed to the terrible rigours of being a black political prisoner in apartheid South Africa. She understood so much that had not been clear to her before. She understood why people died in detention and she knew that the stronger one was, the harsher the treatment that would be meted out.

In an interview with the Institute of International Studies at the University of Berkeley, California, and as part of a study titled
Conversations with History
, the International Red Cross’s medical coordinator for detention-related activities, Hernan Reyes, elucidated prisoners’ reactions to, and assessment of, torture. Asked whether women were more vulnerable and less resilient than men, Reyes said female political prisoners were in many cases the stronger individuals. He recalled seeing how women political prisoners gave prison authorities ‘a very rough time’ with internal rebellion and resistance, despite severe intimidation and force. Women, he said, could be very tough.

Asked what the worst form of torture was, he said that political prisoners who had been severely beaten, tortured with electricity and endured other forms of torture had told him the worst form of torture was being in strict solitary confinement for months on end – six, eight, nine, twelve months.

Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned in harsh conditions and forced to perform years of hard labour, said he had found his own brief encounter with solitary confinement – three days – ‘the most forbidding aspect of prison life’.

Winnie Mandela had been in solitary confinement for thirteen months.

I
N THEIR EFFORTS
to rid themselves of the Mandelas, the security police were not content with Nelson’s incarceration on Robben Island and the concerted campaign of persecution against Winnie. In 1969, while she was in detention, and in the hope of killing the proverbial two birds with one stone, they grabbed an opportunity to get rid of Mandela – permanently.

Success depended on BOSS operative Gordon Winter, and the stage was set for a foolish escape plot hatched by a group of left-wing British sympathisers, who were more idealistic than competent. The plan was initiated by Gordon Bruce, a British left-winger who had become a friend of Mandela, and would be directed by Marianne Borman, a senior employee in the British Information Office.