Winnie Mandela (33 page)

In his book,
Goodbye Bafana
, Warrant Officer James Gregory recounts how Winnie once arrived to visit Mandela, only to be told that the boat trip to Robben Island had been cancelled due to bad weather. A brisk north-westerly wind was howling and whipping up dangerous breakers, but Winnie insisted that they put to sea. When Gus Basson, captain of the ferry, the
Diaz
, told her it was impossible to make the trip that day, Winnie, beautifully dressed as always, smiled and said she had not travelled all the way from Johannesburg only to be stymied by a bit of wind and high seas. She called a senior official in Pretoria, who ordered Basson to take her to the island. Perhaps he was secretly hoping that the boat would capsize and that Winnie would be a problem no more, but the upshot was that the trip would be made.

Basson was livid, and insisted that he would take only a minimum crew so as not to endanger any more lives than necessary. Once the
Diaz
entered the main Benguela stream, it began rolling and twisting violently, tossing around like a matchbox in the ferocious seas. All that could be heard above the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves were the thumping of the water against the hull as the boat lurched into a trough and the scream of the engine as it was reversed. In the cabin below deck, Gregory and Winnie had to hang on for dear life, and Gregory couldn't believe his eyes when he looked at Winnie and she tossed her head back and laughed. They reached the island, and while Winnie saw Madiba, Gregory went to arrange that she could spend the night at the guest house. But as soon as the visit was over, Winnie announced that she wanted to go back to Cape Town. The captain was speechless, Gregory incredulous. But Winnie insisted, and they had no choice but to repeat the nightmare trip across the choppy seas.

Raw courage was exactly what the BPA needed. The organisation drew hostile and fierce resistance from the government-sponsored Urban Bantu Councils (UBC), which translated into personal attacks on BPA members. The situation became so serious that Winnie and Dr Motlana had to obtain an urgent court order restraining the Soweto UBC from taking any action against members of the BPA, their children or their homes. Evidence was presented that one of the UBC councillors, Lucas Shabanga, had suggested attacks on the homes of both Winnie and Dr Motlana, and had proposed the killing of children who prevented their parents from going to work. The disclosures discredited the UBC to such an extent that all the executive members and councillors had to go into hiding.

The government appointed a one-man judicial inquiry to determine the causes of the Soweto uprising, but long before his findings were released, a scapegoat had to be found. Winnie fitted the bill, and on 12 August, two months after the uprising, she and various other Sowetans, including Dr Motlana and his wife, Sally, as well as Dr Mathlare, were detained.

 

Once again Winnie was held at the Fort, under the Internal Security Act. Conditions had not improved at all since 1969, but she did escape the earlier brutality and, because it was simply not in her nature to do otherwise, she challenged the warders head-on when she saw a wrong, and made it right. When she discovered that non-political female inmates who were responsible for cleaning the prison were not allowed to wear underwear and were not issued with shoes, Winnie confronted the female officer in charge and told her that even if these women were criminals, they deserved to be treated with a modicum of dignity. Within a week, the cleaners had both underwear and shoes.

Sally Motlana had complained several times to the warders about a broken window in her cell, but nothing had been done. One night, she dragged her sleeping mat and blankets into the corridor and told the warder she refused to sleep in her cell, which was freezing cold. While Sally and the warder argued, Winnie rounded up all the other prisoners in the section and informed the warder that none of them would go back into their cells until the window was repaired. A senior officer was summoned, an undertaking given that the window would be attended to, and early the next morning workmen arrived to replace the broken glass.

Zeni and Zindzi came home from boarding school to find that their mother had been detained – again. When they visited her, Winnie was struck by the irony that this was the same prison in which she had come close to a miscarriage when she was pregnant with Zeni in 1958. Almost two decades later, she was in the same place, still pursuing the same ideals, and South Africa was no closer to becoming a normal society than it had been when Winnie and 2 000 other women were jailed for opposing the pass laws. In fact, Winnie felt that in some respects, black people were actually worse off than they had been in the 1950s.

In December, after five months in jail and without any charges being brought against her, she was released. Dr Motlana was also freed, and one of their first tasks was to set up a committee of prominent residents to take control of Soweto. Motlana was elected chairman of the Committee of Ten, which stepped into the gap left by the discredited UBC and would become the most influential body in the township.

The security police increased their surveillance of Winnie, and after knowing freedom of movement, speech and association for more than a year, she was served with a new five-year banning order in January 1977. She continued to work at
Frank & Hirsch by day, and, to fill the long hours between 6 pm and 6 am, enrolled with the University of South Africa for a degree in social work by correspondence course. In a sense she was back in solitary confinement, and her life was becoming increasingly difficult.

By contrast, Mandela's hardship was abating. It was almost as though the authorities had decided to focus their efforts on Winnie, knowing it would be punishment enough for Mandela to be aware of her suffering but impotent to do anything about it. He had entered a pensive stage of his life, conscious that the years were slipping by, and started contemplating old age. In December 1976 he had written to Winnie that he was not used to seeing his skin loose and sagging as if he were sixty-two (he was in fact fifty-eight), but as she well knew, he joked, he was really only forty-five, and once he could resume his regular exercise programme no one would challenge his ‘youth'. The letter was written in lighter vein, but between the lines there was a sad and earnest attempt to assure Winnie that he was still worthy of her love. Their relationship occupied much of his reflection at this time.

Shortly after arriving on Robben Island, Mandela had requested permission to start a garden in the courtyard. For years this was not allowed, but finally the prison authorities agreed, and he and the other prisoners were allowed to plant their garden. For most of them this was little more than a hobby, a way to while away the hours, but Madiba threw himself into gardening heart and soul. Every spare moment was spent working there, or reading and studying ways to improve the ‘crops'. For Mandela, the tiny patch represented far more than the growth of plants. He saw it as a parable for the country's people, so sorely in need of nurture and care. He wrote to Winnie about a particularly beautiful tomato plant he had tended from a tiny seedling to a magnificent plant, producing healthy fruit. But when it began to wither, nothing he did could restore it to its former strength, and when it finally died he dug up the roots, washed them and buried them in a corner of the garden, thinking of ‘the life that might have been'. He hoped that Winnie would read between the lines and understand his longing to nurture the people who mattered in his life, and know how he feared that lack of care – his inability through circumstance to cultivate the single most important relationship – would see their marriage share the fate of the tomato plant.

Winnie understood all of it, and as a mother, still grieving for the many children who had died in and since the Soweto uprising, she could extend the allegory to South Africa's young black people, whose parents gave them life and looked after them, only to see them mowed down on the streets.

That letter marked an important point in the lives of both Nelson and Winnie. As he seemed to be moving into the autumn of his political career, she was about to enter the summer of her own. Despite fifteen years of being banned, Winnie was more popular than ever, and her power was about to bloom. The future of black
South Africa and the continuation of the struggle had never been more important to her, and the government realised with alarm that none of the measures they had previously applied had done anything to diminish her influence. Having tried to clip her wings and failed, but still determined to isolate and silence her, the authorities devised a new form of punishment for Winnie.

They exiled her to the heartland of Afrikaner patriotism and segregationist fervour.

A
S SHE HAD DONE
for months, Winnie spent the night of Sunday 15 May 1977 studying until well after midnight for her degree. Zindzi, now seventeen, was home for the school holidays, but had gone to bed early.

At four o’clock in the morning, Winnie was woken by a clamour far worse than the customary banging on the front door that announced a police raid. Being arrested in the middle of the night was nothing new, but since Winnie had no intention of disappearing without trace, as had happened to so many other people in the hands of the security police, she always tried to alert someone when it happened. That night, she telephoned Horst Kleinschmidt’s wife, Ilona.

After dressing and giving Zindzi a few quick instructions, Winnie picked up the suitcase next to the front door, but the police told her to leave it, that she wouldn’t need it.

As she stepped outside into the bright lights trained on her house, she noticed that there were several trucks and a number of policemen in camouflage uniforms. Winnie was driven to the Protea Police Station in Soweto where, like everything else about this particular raid, the procedure differed from previous experiences.

She was neither charged with any offence nor directed to a cell. The officers on duty kept making snide remarks about what awaited her, but none approached her, and she was left to sit on a hard bench in the charge office for the rest of the night. She was shivering, both from the cold and her anxiety over what lay in store, worrying about Zindzi, who had yet again witnessed her mother being dragged off to prison. But, as always, Winnie hid her concerns behind a poker face.

When daylight came, Zindzi was escorted into the police station, carrying the house keys. Only then did the station commander, Colonel Jan Visser, present Winnie with a document authorising her banishment to Brandfort in the Free State – on the direct instructions of the Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger. She had been neither accused nor convicted of a crime, but as in the case of detention without trial, would have no legal recourse against the order.

Winnie had no idea what was going on. At first, she thought she was to be
imprisoned in the Free State, but the police kept saying she was being banished. Then she remembered the trucks parked outside her house, and slowly it dawned on her that she was being sent into exile, forcibly removed, lock, stock and barrel. In her own country.

It had happened to other political figures, including Chief Luthuli, but they had usually been confined to their so-called homelands. Winnie had never even heard of Brandfort, and had no idea where it was. Her mind racing, she tried to ignore the shock and fear clutching at the pit of her stomach, the uncertainty of what came next, mentally running through what she had to do before she left, who to call, what instructions to give. She had no idea that she would not be allowed to pack her things, take leave of her family and close friends, nor even be able to lock her own front door one last time.

Visser told Winnie that the minister had allocated an amount of R100 a month for her expenses, from which rental for a house in Brandfort would be deducted. Coldly, she told him that they could keep their money, that she had nothing left but her pride, and nothing on earth would persuade her to accept a penny from her oppressors.

She and Zindzi were ushered to one of the military trucks outside, piled high with Winnie’s possessions, bundled into the back of one with some heavily armed men, and driven away from the police station.

On the way to Brandfort, Zindzi told Winnie how the police had moved through the house, carried the furniture outside, haphazardly emptied cupboards and wardrobes, and tied the contents up in sheets and blankets pulled from the beds. By the time the journey ended, most of Winnie’s crockery was in pieces.

When the house stood empty, Zindzi said, a policeman asked if she wanted to stay there, or go with Winnie. She chose to go with her mother.

Winnie realised Zindzi had not grasped the magnitude of the sacrifice she was making, and that her teenage daughter had acted instinctively out of support for her. Her mind was in turmoil and she was filled with dread as she watched the city disappear behind them. How long would she be away? Would she ever be allowed to return to her beloved Soweto? It was so much more than just a township to her. She loved the people, their indomitable humour and spontaneity, the courage and community spirit that lit up their drab, often hopeless lives. She had worked among them, she relished the bustle of the crowds. What was it like where she was being taken? She felt as though she had been pushed over the edge of a cliff and could do nothing except wait and see where she would land, and whether she would survive.

As the trucks trundled on, the landscape did nothing to improve her frame of mind. The flat, pale veld was empty except for the occasional farmhouse nestled in a clump of trees at the side of the road. There were no signs of life anywhere.
Winnie tried her best to ignore the nagging despair, reminding herself that this was exactly what the government wanted, and if she succumbed they would emerge victorious – not only over her, but over Madiba, the ANC and all the black people of South Africa. She could not give in. She had to scrape the barrel and find enough courage to live through this enormous challenge – alone, without the support of friends, family or political comrades, with only Zindzi for comfort.