Winnie Mandela (39 page)

In his biography of Mandela, Anthony Sampson writes that, nevertheless, some of Winnie’s friends thought the twin ordeals of jail and exile had, indeed, wrought unwelcome change in her. In Brandfort, there were rumours of reckless behaviour, violent outbursts and alcohol abuse. If that were true, nobody did anything to help or harness a woman who was almost certainly in the early stages of an emotional breakdown, not even when the signals became louder. In July 1983, a woman from Phatakahle laid a complaint against Winnie for allegedly assaulting her nine-year-old son. The boy said Winnie had hit him with a belt, and that the buckle had caught him on the head, causing a deep cut. Winnie said the boy, Andrew Pogisho, had stolen a tricycle from her house, and had fallen while running away from her. The magistrate found the evidence inconclusive, and Winnie was acquitted.

The government, desperate to counteract black political aspirations, had invented a ‘tricameral’ parliament, aimed at forging an alliance with coloureds and Indians. But the exclusion of blacks provoked a fresh wave of violent unrest and stayaways,
and for the first time troops were deployed in the townships, where police were clearly losing the battle. White members of parliament from the Free State began agitating for Winnie’s removal from Brandfort, blaming her for a new mood of defiance within the black labour force and community. Winnie ignored the furore and continued, unapologetically, to preach the gospel of black pride and political rights.

But the mood of white South Africans was changing, too, even in the most unexpected quarters. Winnie received a letter from a young Afrikaans policeman who had been involved in the 1976 Soweto uprising. He said he had been experiencing inner conflict over the political situation in the country, and that he had disobeyed orders to shoot at the 1976 rioters, firing over their heads instead, because, even then, he could not conceive of shooting children his own age simply because their skin was a different colour. He followed the letter with an unexpected visit to Winnie, but parked his car some distance from her house and told her his parents would ‘kill him’ if they knew how he felt. Students from the University of the Free State, one of the bastions of conservative Afrikaner youth, approached Winnie for information about Black Consciousness. They said they wanted to know what was going on in the hearts and minds of their black peers, and had started campus discussions on the burning political issues facing South Africa.

To the average black person, even those actively working for change, it might have seemed, for most of the 1980s, that there was little hope, but once in a while positive signs touched the lives of some, including the Mandela family. Since the sentence in the Rivonia Trial was handed down in June 1964, no family member except Zeni, thanks to her diplomatic status as a member of the Swazi royal house, had been allowed any physical contact with Nelson. But in May 1984, when Winnie and Zeni went to visit him, Warrant Officer Gregory informed both Mandela and Winnie, mere moments before they met, that they could see one another in the same room – and would be permitted to have physical contact.

It had been more than two decades since they touched one another, and the experience was so unexpected that they simply stood there, their arms around one another, without saying a word. For Winnie, this relaxation of the rules was the clearest sign yet that she should dare to hope Madiba
would
be freed. She still cherished the top tier of their wedding cake, and she vowed anew that on the day he walked out of prison, they would complete the tribal formalities of their marriage ceremony.

Back at Brandfort, another surprise awaited her. After seeing Winnie run a rudimentary clinic for years from her tiny house, the Methodist Church had decided to add two rooms and a bathroom to the back of the house, so that she would be able to run a proper facility. In addition to the basic assistance Winnie herself provided to those who were ill, she had arranged with two doctors, her
own physician, Joe Veriava, and a friend of his, Dr Abu-Baker Asvat, to make regular visits to Phatakahle to treat patients in need of more specialised care. Asvat had his own mobile clinic, a caravan full of medical supplies, which he financed himself and used to visit squatter camps to help those in need. Now he would also have adequate facilities from which to work in Brandfort.

Winnie’s surprise was complete when Fatima Meer told her she had arranged for electricity to be installed in the house. For the first time in almost eight years, Winnie would once again have some of the basic commodities she had left behind in Soweto, and new projects as outlets for her energy. The crèche she had started was still housed in the Methodist church hall, and was now attended by close on 100 toddlers, and suddenly the municipal authorities announced that they would make land available for the building of a youth centre, something Winnie was looking forward to. But, as usual, good news was quickly followed by bad. In June, Zindzi’s boyfriend and the father of her second child, Zondwa, attacked her, stabbed her in the head and left her for dead in the veld. Winnie was given permission to travel to Johannesburg to be with her daughter, who spent several days in intensive care after a scan showed possible brain injury. Her family and friends tried to protect her privacy by saying she had been injured in a car accident, but the police, who knew the truth, leaked the details to the media.

Unlike her sister, Zindzi had no special credentials, and she became almost as much a victim of the Mandela name as her mother. Though she shared her parents’ opposition to the pass system, she had hoped to continue her studies in Swaziland, but once she turned sixteen she needed a passport in order to do so. And she could not get a passport without a reference book.

But the government refused to issue one, offering one feeble excuse after another for several years, before finally telling her to apply for an identity document in her ‘homeland’ of Transkei. Zindzi refused to do that, as it would have meant forfeiting her South African citizenship, and when not even intervention by Helen Suzman was able to secure her a pass, she took matters into her own hands.

In June 1981, she managed to obtain a legitimate travel document, albeit via irregular channels. But the ruse was discovered and the document confiscated, and Zindzi abandoned her plans for further study in Swaziland. She went to work for the Institute of Race Relations instead. Later, she enrolled as a student at the University of Cape Town.

At intervals throughout the 1980s, Winnie received various international awards in recognition of her contribution to the struggle. Haverford Quaker College in Philadelphia gave her an honorary doctorate, and, unable to accept the award in person, she asked Zeni and her old friend, Adelaide Tambo, to do so on her behalf. The Caribbean state of Grenada invited her to the celebrations marking their first anniversary of independence, and she shared the Freedom Prize – awarded by two
liberal Scandinavian newspapers, the Danish
Politiken
and the Swedish
Dagens Nyheter –
with Helen Suzman. In October 1984, Zeni and her husband travelled to Denmark to receive the award on Winnie’s behalf, and played a tape recording of her acceptance speech to the audience.

By the end of 1984 the South African government, confronted by a struggling economy and violence that threatened to spiral out of control, was forced to rethink its policies. On 31 January 1985, President PW Botha made a dramatic and very public conditional offer of freedom to Mandela. He chose parliament as the platform for his gesture, but made it clear that Mandela would have to renounce violence and the armed struggle in order to unlock the prison gates. Mandela requested an urgent meeting with Winnie and Ismail Ayob to convey his response, and they visited him on Friday 8 February.

Two days later, at a rally organised by the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Soweto’s Jabulani Stadium, Zindzi read the statement Mandela had prepared. It was the first time in more than twenty years that South Africans had heard any direct message from the ANC leader, and as Zindzi spoke the words, ‘My father says …’ the packed stadium shook with cheers. By the time she had finished, many of the people at the rally were in tears.

Mandela rejected the conditions imposed by Botha, but emphasised that negotiation was the only way forward for South Africa.

Momentous as the events of that week were from a political standpoint, they were overshadowed, for Winnie, by personal grief. Her sister Irene had died, and Zindzi had sent her father a telegram to tell him the news, but the letter of comfort he wrote to Winnie did not reach her until two weeks later. Though not as close to Irene as she had been to Nancy, Winnie had become more emotionally vulnerable with each passing year, and the timing of Irene’s death had been unfortunate, coinciding as it did with the offer for Mandela’s freedom. As always, politics had taken precedence over personal matters, but this time Winnie had been left feeling lost and spent. In a letter to Nelson on 20 February, she bared her soul:

I returned in the early hours of today after almost three sad weeks of the most emotional storms in our life of separation. I however had one thing to look forward to, the letter from you which I knew would make my year. I knew it would reconstruct my shattered soul and restore it to my faith – the nation. Moments of such self-indulgence bring shame to me at such times when I think of those who have paid the supreme price for their ideological beliefs. Some of those fallen ones were dearer to me than my own life.

The letter was there, dated 4.2.85. I’m rereading it for the umpteenth time. Contrary to your speculation at first, I do not think I would have had
the fibre to bear it all if you had been with me. You once said I should expect the inevitable fact that the struggle leaves debris behind; from that moment those many years ago, I swore to my infinitesimal ego that I would never allow myself to be part of that political quagmire.

If life is comprised of the things you enumerate and hold dear, I am lost for words, due to the fact that in my own small way life feels a little more monumental, material and demanding of one’s innermost soul. That is why the love and warmth that exude from you behind those unkind concrete grey monotonous and cruel walls simply overwhelm me, especially when I think of those who in the name of the struggle have been deprived of that love.

You refer to moments when love and happiness, trust and hope have turned into pure agony, when conscience and sense of guilt have ravaged every part of your being. It is true, darling, I’ve lost so much of what is dearest to me in the years of our separation. When you have lived alone as I’ve done as a young bride and never known what married life is all about you cling to minute consolations, the sparing of one from the indignities that ravage us. In our case, with all those we have lost, the dignity of death has been respected …

I was so proud of your message to us. I’ve often wondered how I would have reacted if I had met you, Uncle Walter and others on the Pollsmoor steps and was told to take you home …
³

Five months after Mandela’s rejection of Botha’s offer, black South Africans had made it abundantly clear that they were not about to sit around and wait for change. They heeded Oliver Tambo’s call to render the country ungovernable in droves, and by July, law and order had effectively broken down, and many townships were close to anarchy. On 20 July, the government declared a state of emergency, which gave the police sweeping powers to detain and interrogate people. Television coverage nightly depicted major battles in the townships between ANC supporters and the police, and public confidence in the government’s ability to maintain stability began to wane. Oliver Tambo said the state of emergency was preparing the ground for a serious eruption of violent conflict, and in August an opinion poll showed that 70 per cent of blacks and 30 per cent of whites expected civil war in South Africa. As if the violence wasn’t bad enough, the economy was on the brink of destruction due to the withdrawal of capital by international investors and the introduction of sanctions.

It was only a matter of time before the wave of violence washed over the tiny community of Brandfort. On 5 August, pupils from Phatakahle boycotted classes and staged demonstrations. The police reacted with a baton charge and fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and a number of children sought shelter in Winnie’s
house, pursued by the police. In the melee, doors and windows were broken. The next day, Winnie had to travel to Johannesburg for a medical check-up, but her sister stayed at the house with Zindzi’s son, Zondwa, or Gadaffi as the family called him. The pupils of Phatakahle came out in protest again, and once again some fled into Winnie’s home ahead of the police. This time, the damage was far worse. Petrol bombs were thrown into the house and the clinic burned to the ground. In the chaos, Gadaffi disappeared. Ismail Ayob received news that he was missing while Winnie was in his office, and immediately drove her back to Brandfort. She could hardly believe her eyes. Her house was in ruins, with debris and shattered furniture everywhere. There was blood on the walls and a bloodstained cloth was draped over a bust of John F Kennedy that had been a gift from American sympathisers. Fortunately Winnie’s neighbour, the security policeman’s wife, turned up with Gadaffi, who was unscathed. He had run into her house when the fracas broke out and she had kept him there.

Since her house was in ruins, Winnie decided to return to Johannesburg, but the police refused to give her permission to go back to the house in Orlando West. She had to stay in a hotel while they decided where she could live.

In the midst of this period of intense personal and political developments, a routine examination determined that Mandela had an enlarged prostate, and needed surgery. The government knew very well, given the political climate, that there would be a bloody revolution if Mandela died, and he was provided with the best medical care the country could offer. Surgery was scheduled for November. Winnie flew to Cape Town to see him the day before his operation, and, coincidentally, the Minister of Justice, Kobie Coetsee, was on the same flight. Winnie seized the moment, and spent most of the two-hour flight talking to Coetsee. In John Carlin’s television documentary for the BBC,
Frontline
, Coetsee later said: ‘All of a sudden, I became aware of the presence of this very interesting and imposing woman. I recognised her of course, immediately. And there she was standing, and she didn’t speak a word. She just indicated with her head that I was to move the briefcase. She wanted to sit next to me. I did so, and she sat next to me for the remainder of the flight.’