Winnie Mandela (7 page)

Columbus, not knowing how to deal with his daughter’s affliction, went to fetch the
inyanga
[witch doctor] Flathela, who was known to see and talk to witches, and could exorcise evil spirits. Flathela said Irene’s problem was linked to the entire family. He put
muti
[protective charms] around the house, burned strange objects in Irene’s room and ordered everyone to shave their heads. Placing the family in a semicircle formation, he made incisions on their cheeks and rubbed a black substance into the cuts. He pressed on Irene’s head with the palm of his hand and spoke in a strange language. From the tone of his voice, he seemed to be pleading and scolding in turn. Then he beat Irene, who cried in a voice that was not her own until she collapsed and lay still, fast asleep. Flathela said he had exorcised the witches – and when Irene awoke, she was well.

Irene’s affliction led to an unexpected reversal of Winnie’s fortune. Columbus arranged for her to take her sister’s place at the school in Ndunge, which was also where Granny lived, and during the school terms she stayed with her maternal grandparents.

In September, almost six months after her education had come to an abrupt halt, Winnie was back in the classroom, facing new challenges. She had fallen behind the other children, and was shocked to learn that her class was about to write revision tests in preparation for the year-end examinations. But she was not too disappointed by her results. There were 200 Standard 6 pupils at Ndunge, divided into three classes, and Winnie was placed fifty-eighth in her group of seventy-two. For the rest of the year she worked even more diligently, and two months later was one of only twenty-two pupils in her group to pass the final examinations. Winnie was overjoyed, as was Columbus, who knew better than most what odds she had overcome, and he slaughtered a sheep in her honour – something he had never done for any of his daughters before. Ever conscious of her mother’s rejection, Winnie was deeply grateful for her father’s recognition.

Now it was time for her to go to boarding school at Emfundisweni in Flagstaff, a hundred miles from home. Winnie packed two steel trunks that she would take with her, one containing her clothes, the other a considerable amount of food, which Makhulu said was a waste of money, but Columbus seemed deaf to her criticism.

It was the start of a new and exciting period in Winnie’s life. For the first time she would have to wear shoes, and her father took her to Bizana to buy them, along with the black and white uniform she would wear at school. As she tried her shoes on for the first time, Winnie embarked on a lifelong fascination with clothes, even though wearing the new footwear was unexpectedly painful. Her feet, toughened by years of going barefoot in the veld, rebelled against confinement. For quite some time she experienced acute discomfort, discarding the shoes whenever she could to spare her aching feet. As a reward for her good marks, Columbus also bought her an overcoat. At home, the children wrapped themselves in blankets to keep warm.

The coat was far too large for her, but like most of the children she knew, she was used to wearing clothes that didn’t fit properly. Limited resources forced parents to pass clothes down from one child to the next, and when they did buy something new, it was usually a few sizes too big to allow the child to grow into the garment and make it last as long as possible. Winnie treasured her coat and wore it for the next few winters, studiously ignoring other children’s sniggers at her oversized apparel.

Inevitably, venturing into the outside world meant exposure to the racial discrimination that was the reality of life in South Africa. It was impossible to
ignore and touched every facet of black people’s lives. All the shops in Bizana, even those catering exclusively to the black population, were owned and run by whites, and customers from the outlying areas might walk for a day or more to reach them. Some of the Pondo tribesmen rode into Bizana on horseback, proud and erect; while others made the long journey on foot, walking for a day or more, their wives often toting a baby nestled snugly on their backs, other children in tow. They arrived tired, hungry and covered in dust, but there was nowhere in Bizana for them to refresh themselves, nowhere they could sit down and have a meal, not even an outdoors area where the exhausted travellers could rest their feet. White arrogance made no allowances for the dignity, wisdom and practical experience of people from other cultures. It took many decades before whites even began to grasp that some of the blacks they treated with such disdain were people of stature in their own communities, where they were respected, even revered. The tribesmen were dignified people, and when they went to town the men tended to their business, met in small groups in the street to exchange news and share views; while their wives talked and gossiped with one another before setting out, once more, on the long journey home.

After shopping for her new clothes, Winnie and her father went to buy food at one of the stores. It was crowded with Pondo tribesmen wrapped in colourful traditional blankets. As Winnie waited for Columbus to be served, she noticed a tribesman buying a loaf of bread, some sugar and a cold drink, which he took to share with his wife, who was trying in vain to soothe her wailing baby. Clearly exhausted, the woman sat down on the floor in a corner of the store and put the baby to her breast. The man squatted on his haunches next to her and broke off pieces of bread for them to eat. Without warning, the white youth who was serving Columbus started shouting and charged at the man and his wife in the corner. He yelled at them to get out, that he wouldn’t have
kaffirs
making a mess in his shop, and kicked at them and their food.

Winnie was appalled. She fully expected the shop owners, apparently the boy’s parents, to intervene, but they just laughed. The buzz of conversation died abruptly, and no one uttered a word. Winnie looked expectantly at her father, who always spoke out strongly against any wrongdoing. Surely he would say something?

But Columbus, too, was silent. He had taught all his children to respect others and to have pride in their race, and Winnie could see that he was deeply disturbed at the humiliation meted out to his kinsman, so she could not understand why he said nothing. Only in later years, once she understood the complex dynamics of the relationship between the races, did she realise that had her father spoken, he might have made the situation worse.

The incident left an indelible impression on Winnie and made her aware, for the first time, that her father was fallible. In time, she would recognise that one
of apartheid’s by-products was that from an early age, black children saw their parents and families humiliated without making any attempt to protest or defend themselves. For children from families who taught them respect and compassion for fellow human beings, this was confusing. They could not understand why their parents were so often treated so shabbily by whites, and parents were at a loss to explain that they had done nothing to deserve such treatment, meted out on no other basis but the colour of their skin. It was an injustice that created an entire nation of people who expected to be victimised and brutalised, and in the long term cowered and did almost anything to avoid situations that might lead to humiliation and punishment, accepting servility as the norm. The pent-up frustration of generations would reach breaking point in Soweto in 1976 – but that was a long way off, and twelve-year-old Winnie Madikizela could not even begin to imagine her role in the future South Africa.

In January, with beating heart, she boarded a bus in the company of other children on their way to Flagstaff. She spent three years at Emfundisweni, where the only diversion from her studies was a flirtation with the idea of having a boyfriend. All the girls in her class wrote notes to the boys they liked, but there was no physical contact, and the relationships were confined to furtive glances exchanged in church.

Bit by bit, Winnie’s character was taking shape. Outwardly, she was still an unsophisticated country girl, but her parents had laid a solid ground for her development: Gertrude, with her strict religious morality and uncompromising discipline; Columbus, by sharing his passion for acquiring knowledge and skills, through his pride in his people, and by his example of compassion and assistance for those in their community who were in need.

Not surprisingly, she passed her junior certificate (Standard 8) with distinction, and when she went home for the holidays Columbus surprised her with news of his ambitious plans for her. It had been clear to him for some time that Winnie possessed both the ability and motivation for further study, and he was pondering the best route for her to follow. Initially, he wanted her to go to Fort Hare University, but a nephew who had studied there warned against it. He said there were too few female students, with the result that the young men were always pursuing them, and it was not the right place for Winnie. So, mindful of her natural compassion for others, Columbus decided on the Hofmeyr School of Social Work in Johannesburg, the only institution that trained black social workers. But Winnie had two more years of school to complete, and she would have to do even better than before in order to be accepted as a student.

Those years would be spent further afield at Shawbury, a Methodist mission school at Qumbu. Like many of the other pupils, Winnie would become politicised
there. The teachers were all Fort Hare graduates and members of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), and Winnie was strongly influenced by their philosophy. She had also read about the ANC in
Zonk
magazine.

Not surprisingly, her favourite teacher was a lot like Columbus, and taught his pupils about the struggle for equality in much the same way that Columbus had taught history. The two men shared a high regard for the Germans, and Winnie’s teacher venerated Bismarck. He would make his way down the long corridor to the senior classroom bellowing: ‘The unification of Germany, Bismarck believed, could not be attained through parliamentary speeches and debates, but by means of b-l-o-o-d and iron.’
¹
He always reached the classroom as he got to ‘b-l-o-o-d’, and entered to gales of laughter from the pupils.

The struggle in South Africa, he taught, was no different. Winnie left Shawbury convinced that her people would win their freedom only by means of blood and iron. While she hated the name Winifred, she thought the diminutive, Winnie, would serve as a constant reminder of her people’s oppression, and spur her to action for change.

Shawbury also saw the start of Winnie’s development into the striking woman who would capture the heart of more than one of South Africa’s most prominent men. Sometimes, however, her blossoming beauty drew unwelcome attention. The first time this happened was on a school outing to Tsolo. The bus stopped at Flagstaff, and the pupils were stretching their legs when one of Winnie’s friends pointed out that a dwarf was staring at her. He approached her and asked if she knew how pretty she was. Winnie was dumbstruck and had no idea how to react, but when he gave her a 10-shilling note and said it was the first instalment for her lobola [bride price], she was near panic. Before he left, he told her she would be his wife as soon as she was fully grown. Afterwards, her friends told her the man was called Khotso, that he was wealthy and something of a legend in the district, and already had many wives. Winnie was mortified but her friends laughed, and then helped her spend the money.

The next such encounter was far more serious, and affected her schoolwork so badly that she slipped from the top of her class to thirteenth place, something that had never happened before. Her distress was exacerbated when Columbus issued a reprimand for her poor performance, and threatened that his plans for her would have to be abandoned if she didn’t pull up her socks. She ached to tell him the root of her problem, but was too ashamed. The trouble was that she looked older than her fifteen years, and was sometimes even mistaken for a teacher. The assistant principal had noticed the tall, slender young woman, and began making advances to her. As head prefect, it was Winnie’s job to fetch the keys to the bookcases from him, and one day he pressed a tightly rolled cash note into her hand. She felt so humiliated that she burst into tears. When he continued
giving her money, she decided to confide in her fellow head prefect, Ezra Malizo Ndamase, who was also supposed to be her boyfriend, though this meant little more than working together on some school projects and sharing their duties as prefects. When Winnie told Ezra what had happened, she started crying, and a bewildered Ezra was too embarrassed to comfort her. He never said a word about the matter, and Winnie regretted having told him.

The assistant principal taught three subjects to Winnie’s class, and she found it impossible to concentrate on any of them. Disappointed by Ezra’s reaction, she did not want to tell any of her other classmates, and dared not confide in her father or the matron, Mrs Mtshali. The matron was something of a martinet who regularly inspected the girls, and if she found anything untoward, would make the offender lie naked on the floor and beat her with a whip. Winnie was forced to help her strip the girls and found the duty mortifying, thinking it a shameful way to treat a girl. She had no doubt that if she told Mrs Mtshali about the money she would be accused of encouraging the teacher, and be beaten, naked, on the floor as well. The disgrace would be harder to bear than the pain, so she kept the awful secret to herself.

Generally, though, life at Shawbury was stimulating and challenging. Winnie was popular with her peers, partly because she was always willing to help them where she could. One of her school friends, Nomawethu Mbere, would later recall how Winnie, having abandoned her youthful rebellion against religion, took the lead in organising their church attendance on Sundays. Nomawethu looked up to Winnie, whom she saw as reserved, even introvert, but with obvious leadership qualities and a remarkable talent for disciplining other pupils. Winnie was two classes ahead of Nomawethu but regularly helped the younger girls with their assignments, so much so that one teacher admonished Nomawethu for being too far ahead in the curriculum, thanks to Winnie’s coaching.