Winnie Mandela (30 page)

After the police damaged her front door, three white sympathisers who had read newspaper reports about the attack called at her home and offered to lend her a guard dog for protection. The police, never far away, promptly arrested the callers and charged them with visiting a banned person. Winnie was charged with breaking her ban. When the dog was returned to its owners, a friend of Winnie’s, Angela Cobbett, a prominent member of the Black Sash, gave Winnie a German shepherd dog. She, too, was arrested for visiting Winnie, and the dog, Sheba, was poisoned soon afterwards.

Next, a group of Winnie’s friends employed and paid a nightwatchman to look after her, but he was powerless against the security police. On one occasion, three policemen entered the house while Winnie wasn’t there, despite the watchman’s attempts to prevent them. The next morning, he discovered that all the washing hanging on the line, including one of Winnie’s dresses, had been slashed with a knife. By now, Winnie was convinced that the police were paying people to intimidate or even kill her.

Children were exempt from the ban on communication with Winnie, and for a while her ten-year-old niece lived with her. One night, Winnie was awakened by a sound in her bedroom. She switched on the bedside lamp and saw three men approaching her bed. One was holding a wire noose. It had been many years since Winnie had stood her ground in childhood fights with the boys who were her playmates, but she was determined that if the intruders wanted to kill her, she would take at least one of them with her. As she sprang out of bed, charged with adrenalin and ready to do battle, her niece started screaming, and the three men fled.

Winnie telephoned her attorney and some friends, and on investigation they found that the burglar bars at one window had been sawed through, then carefully placed back in position. She had no doubt that this, too, was the work of the security police, but her friends insisted that she report the incident. The police took a statement from her, but, as she had known would happen, nothing ever came of it. Some time later, a bomb was thrown at the house and exploded against a side wall. Then the garage was burgled and the windows of her car were smashed. Finally, the car was stolen.

No one was ever apprehended for any of the numerous offences perpetrated against Winnie – all incidents of theft, housebreaking, assault, damage to property, bomb attacks and shots fired apparently baffled the usually efficient South African Police, who never solved a single case on behalf of the woman living at house No. 8115, Orlando West.

Zindzi, although she was only twelve, had witnessed enough to understand that the state was waging all-out war on her mother, and she appealed to the United Nations to protect Winnie. Both the UN secretary general and the International Committee of the Red Cross sought assurances from the South African government that Winnie would not be harmed. But her friends were not convinced, and decided that she needed more protection than the apartheid government’s word.

Horst Kleinschmidt was a member of the Christian Institute and later executive director of the International Defence and Aid Fund. Father Cosmos Desmond was a Franciscan priest who had been banned and placed under house arrest after writing
The Discarded People
, which exposed the plight of victims of forced removals that underpinned the government’s homeland resettlement scheme. Together, they directed construction of a wall around Winnie’s corner property. Many years before, Mandela had planted an evergreen hedge along the boundaries, but while he and Winnie were in prison, it had died, and only a few brown stumps remained. Horst instructed the builders to follow the original hedgerow as their guideline for positioning the wall. It should have been a simple enough undertaking but, predictably, the project was beset with problems.

Construction was well under way when municipal officials pointed out that the demarcation line was skew, and that part of the wall had been built on the
neighbouring plot. The builders knocked it down and started again, but, again at an advanced stage, the constructor went bankrupt and another had to be found. Meanwhile, Winnie had noted that the wall would be of little use as a security measure, as it was nowhere near high enough to keep intruders at bay. Despite the underlying seriousness of the project, it became a source of great amusement to all involved, and helped to distract Winnie, for a while, from her many other problems. Increasing the height of the wall was a major operation, and inevitably the ‘wall committee’ ran out of money. There was another delay while additional funds were raised. Finally, the wall was completed – but no one had made provision for the cost of gates, and for a while the gaping holes where they were eventually installed rendered the wall entirely useless as protection against unwelcome callers.

In 1974, Mandela, anxious about the series of attacks on Winnie, appealed to the government to restrain the police, and asked that she be allowed to own a firearm. The police refused, arguing that Winnie was too impulsive and quicktempered to be considered a responsible gun owner. Having experienced their share of her angry response to intrusions, they obviously had no desire to encounter an enraged
and
armed Winnie Mandela.

One of Winnie’s staunchest friends and supporters was Peter Magubane, the photographer for
Drum
magazine. His long association with Winnie had cost him dearly. Another one of those betrayed by Gordon Winter, he was detained for eighteen months, much of it in solitary confinement. But Magubane refused to be intimidated into turning his back on Winnie, and helped her in any way he could. In May 1973, he drove Zeni and Zindzi into Johannesburg to meet their mother during her lunch hour. While she and the girls were having a snack in Magubane’s minibus on the corner of Troye and Jeppe streets, Winnie was arrested for being in the presence of another banned person. Magubane was arrested as well. The arresting officer, Sergeant Van Niekerk, gloated that Winnie was going to prison for a long time for the offence, and said that this time not even her ‘friends in Bloemfontein’ would be able to help her.

Frustrated at every turn in their quest to remove Winnie from public view, the security police were scathing in their criticism of and contempt for the courts that either dismissed charges against Winnie or gave her suspended sentences. The Appellate Division in Bloemfontein, which managed to maintain its independence and integrity despite heavy political pressure, was singled out for special malice.

Van Niekerk’s prediction proved wrong. Winnie was sentenced to twelve months in prison, but the sentence was halved on appeal. Her daughters were in court when the initial sentence was handed down, and Zindzi burst into tears. As they left the building, Cosmos Desmond having paid Winnie’s bail, she reprimanded Zindzi sternly, telling her never again to show her distress in front of the white
authorities, as it gave them the satisfaction of knowing they had succeeded in hurting one. Zindzi never forgot her mother’s words, and moulded her future reaction to hardships on Winnie’s philosophy.

It pained Winnie to know that Magubane was suffering as a result of his friendship with her and his unfailing willingness to help. She believed emphatically that the photographer was banned and periodically imprisoned simply because he offered support to Nelson Mandela’s wife and children, and not because he himself presented any kind of security risk. The police had successfully isolated Winnie from many of her old friends by threatening and harassing them, but when Magubane refused to yield to that kind of pressure, a more insidious approach was needed.

The authorities knew that any action taken against friends and family members was an indirect form of punishment against Nelson and Winnie. Through their collaborators in the media, reports of an inappropriate relationship between Winnie and Magubane began to surface, and, knowing that the innuendo and rumour would wound Mandela deeply, the authorities ensured that such reports came to his attention, despite the fact that he was not permitted to read newspapers. As before, he would simply find cuttings of all negative publicity about Winnie on the bed in his cell at the end of the day.

In September 1973, Winnie received news that her father was dying. She was granted permission to travel to the Transkei to see him, and took Zeni and Zindzi with her. Columbus was so frail that he could hardly stand or walk, but he was determined that he would not receive his daughter from his sickbed. Even in the final days of his life, he commanded respect and admiration, and insisted that Hilda help him dress in his best suit, which hung loosely on his emaciated body. Hilda also had to help him stand when he greeted his beloved daughter and her children, and despite the enormous effort it took, he told Winnie and the girls that this was how he wanted them to remember him – standing erect. Winnie, who had inherited his indomitable spirit, understood that he meant far more than the actual physical act. When she said goodbye to her father, Winnie kissed him, for the first and only time in her life.

Winnie began serving her six-month sentence in the Magubane case on 14 October 1974. This time, she was better prepared than when she was dragged off to prison in May 1969. She arranged for her daughters, who were home from boarding school, to stay in the Orlando West house under the watchful eye of family members. Dr Motlana, one of their guardians, and other friends were close at hand, and Horst Kleinschmidt would take care of their financial needs. The terrible memories of the two little girls clinging to her, screaming, when the police took her away five years earlier, still haunted Winnie and her daughters, but this time they were better equipped to deal with the parting stoically.

For the first month Winnie was held at the Fort in Johannesburg. After that she was transferred in the dead of night – presumably to forestall any attempted escape or demonstrations by supporters – to the women’s prison at Kroonstad in the Free State. Unlike her previous sojourn in a penal institution, there was no solitary confinement, the food was decent, and Zeni and Zindzi were allowed to visit. She also had companionship. One of her fellow prisoners was a legend of the struggle, Dorothy Nyembe, who had been one of Mandela’s close friends. She was one of South Africa’s longest-serving female political prisoners, sentenced in 1968 to fifteen years for harbouring Umkhonto we Sizwe fighters.

Dorothy was a devout Christian and courageous to the core, and when Winnie arrived at Kroonstad she was already over fifty and had served almost six years of her sentence. Incarceration had taken its toll, and Winnie detected clear outward signs of suffering and sacrifice, but Dorothy’s spirit was strong, and she was as committed to the cause as ever. She was also a pillar of strength for her fellow prisoners. Winnie greatly admired Dorothy, who had significantly influenced her own political growth, and was especially struck by her lack of bitterness. Dorothy would recount how Mangosuthu Buthelezi had testified against her, but rather than being angry or vengeful, she was remarkably conciliatory towards the Zulu leader.

Winnie and Dorothy’s intimate circle was completed by Amina Desai, who was serving a five-year sentence. Amina had lent her car to Ahmed Timol, a thirty-year-old Indian schoolteacher, who was arrested while in possession of political pamphlets and who, according to the police, had dived from a window on the tenth floor of John Vorster Square, as police headquarters in Johannesburg had been renamed, while he was being interrogated. Years later, Gordon Winter set the record straight in his book about BOSS, and disclosed that two security policemen had dangled Timol out of the window while holding him by his feet, threatening to drop him unless he gave them the information they wanted. One of them lost his grip, and Timol plunged to his death.

Although conditions at Kroonstad were infinitely better than those under which Winnie had previously been held, she still suffered from periodic claustrophobia and depression. Along with Dorothy and Amina, she was held in a special self-contained section of the prison, and they had no contact with any of the non-political inmates. Each woman had a tiny cell, and they shared the luxury of a bathroom and a tiny exercise yard that was enclosed by a high wall that blocked out everything but the sky. They were allowed to sew and read, but the books selected for them by the warders were third-rate novels, and Winnie yearned for something more substantial to engage her mind. The young white wardresses who watched over them were poorly educated and could barely speak English, though the head of the prison, Erika van Zyl, who had a degree in penology, treated them
with respect. She realised that they were accustomed to a decent standard of living, and ensured that they all had new blankets and prison uniforms.

Mandela agonised over the fact that Winnie was in jail again, and tried to help her in the only way he could, by giving her advice based on his own experience. He encouraged her to meditate before going to sleep at night, and shared his philosophy that a prison cell was conducive to self-discovery and exploration of one’s mind and feelings.

Winnie was released on 13 April 1975. Dorothy Nyembe served her full fifteenyear sentence and stayed in prison until 20 March 1984. Amina Desai’s friendship with Winnie endured, and when Winnie was prevented by her banning orders from earning a living, Amina showed her support by sending gifts of shoes and clothing.

Back in Johannesburg, Winnie found the first well-paying job she had secured since having to leave the Child Welfare Society. She went to work for Frank & Hirsch, a company specialising in consumer electronics, for R250 a month. Her employer, Helmut Hirsch, refused to be intimidated, and ignored pertinent suggestions by the police that she should be dismissed. He told them unequivocally that his company’s policy was to employ people who were capable and efficient, irrespective of race or political affiliation, and that Mrs Mandela was a valued employee.

Winnie’s fortitude had not gone unnoticed internationally, and British women nominated her Woman of the Year for 1974. For the first time in many years, she had cause for gratitude. She had a good job that offered the bonus of support and security from an employer who was undaunted by the official attention she drew, and her daughters were happily settled at Waterford, though they lived with the daily dread of what might happen to their mother. Zindzi was showing exceptional creative talent. She learned to play both the piano and the guitar, and found an outlet for her emotions and fears by composing songs and writing poems, which revealed something of her inner anguish, as this example shows: