Young Mandela

by David James Smith

  Twelve

  LIKE MOST OF the young white Jewish people who had become involved in the liberation movement, Wolfie Kodesh was a first-generation South African whose parents had been immigrants from Eastern Europe. Wolfie’s own father had fled the pogroms in Russia and though many of the new generation gradually constructed comfortable middle-class lives, they also had their own experiences of poverty, struggle and oppression.

  Wolfie had been raised for a while in a Cape Town slum and fought the gray-shirt fascists there in the 1930s. Later he signed up to confront the fascists of Hitler and Mussolini in Abyssinia, in North Africa and finally in Italy, as a volunteer in the South African army serving alongside the Allies.

  He had been an early activist in the Springbok Legion, many of whose members, such as Wolfie, were already or later became communists. Even though the ANC did not allow non-black Africans as members, he and Mandela became close colleagues, particularly during the early 1960s.

  Unlike the militant younger generation of black Africans, many of the Jews had fought in the war and had valuable knowledge and experience to share.

  Wolfie was one of the handful of people chosen to look after Mandela while he was underground, ensuring his security, taking care of his transport and finding him places to stay. Ahmed Kathrada was involved in this “underground committee” too, and their role was just one among many hidden clues to the surprisingly intimate bond between the ANC and the communists—a bond fostered by Mandela that troubled many black Africans, inside South Africa and out.

  There is no doubt that Wolfie was a tremendously useful ally for secret operations. While he had been sleeping outdoors during the state of emergency in 1960, he had also affected disguises, growing a beard, wearing shabby clothing and dark glasses and even having a false heel built into a shoe so that he was forced to walk with a limp. He soon abandoned the shoe, however, as the limp tended to attract attention. He would use secret signals to communicate with colleagues, have cars left in side streets for collection and practiced techniques, both on foot and when driving, to avoid being followed.

  Wolfie grew weary of sleeping on golf courses and in gardens—it was very cold at night—so he decided it was time to rent a flat. He must have looked at a dozen before finding one between the inner city suburbs of Berea and Yeoville, in an apartment building at 52 Webb Street. It had an underground garage with a parking space right next to the steps to the front door of the flat itself, which was on the ground floor. Perfect! Wolfie took the lease, being careful to sign it with an assumed name, Keith Shapiro, because he knew it was common practice to put the tenants’ names at the front entrance and he didn’t want Special Branch finding “Wolfie Kodesh” written there.

  He made the flat his base for many months, coming and going, but always doubling back and taking different routes to evade detection. Then one night he arranged a meeting for Mandela at the nearby apartment of some friends, a couple with no children who were always kind enough to go out and leave their home empty for Wolfie to use, without ever asking questions.

  Mandela, wearing a peaked cap, was driven in from a township and was dropped off, to be collected at 11 p.m. after the meeting, which Wolfie recalled as a gathering of the ANC leadership involving Walter Sisulu and others he had since forgotten. Wolfie was already there when the others arrived, walking down the passage to the apartment where the meeting was to be held. Just as Sisulu entered, Wolfie saw an elderly white couple watching from a nearby doorway. A procession of Africans going into a flat was not a common sight. Wolfie heard the old man say to his wife, “Go and phone the police.”

  Wolfie ran out into the street, ran round to the French windows of the apartment and knocked quietly on the glass. When the window was opened, he explained what had happened and they all quickly left.

  Mandela was not due to be picked up for a few hours but there was no time to waste as the police could arrive at any moment. On the spur of the moment Wolfie said, “Well, look here, I’ve got a place.” They all agreed, “All right. You take Nelson.” So he took Mandela the few blocks to his flat. When they were safe inside Wolfie explained how and why he had acquired it. Mandela laughed and said, “OK, I’ll stay. We’ll see what happens.”

  He ended up being there for a couple of months or more (the precise dates are beyond recall) as he sought to persuade reluctant comrades that it was time to fight and made plans for the military campaign ahead. It was a small apartment with a single bed lodged in the alcove. On that first evening, assuming that Mandela would take the bed, Wolfie retrieved the stretcher from the cupboard and prepared to sleep on that. Mandela said, no, he didn’t want to upset Wolfie’s routine; he would take the stretcher, and would not be persuaded out of it.

  They sat and talked for a while. Wolfie was naturally keen to be prepared for eventualities. There would be cleaners coming in, African cleaners of course, as all white apartments were then cleaned by “flat boys” who all lived in rooms the size of broom cupboards at the top of buildings. (Locations in the sky, they were called, a location being an alternative name to “township” for places such as Orlando and Sophiatown.)

  There was a peephole in the front door, but Wolfie wanted Mandela to have a cover story, so they agreed he would pretend to be a student who was waiting to leave the country for further education. Mandela had a ready name, David Motsamayi, which was to be his pseudonym throughout the months ahead.

  Mandela never explained why he chose that name—he claimed he could not remember—but it belonged to a former client of his law firm. As he told Richard Stengel, Motsamayi “was a big shebeen boss and he had been to prison a couple of times but nevertheless a respectable chap, and he made his wealth in jail.”

  After a hot bath, Mandela went to sleep. His feet must have been hanging over the edge of that stretcher. Early the next morning, Wolfie was awakened about five by the creaking of the stretcher. When he looked he saw Mandela sitting on the edge, putting on a vest, followed by long johns, a tracksuit and takkies—gym shoes. Mandela pulled the curtains apart slightly and opened the window a fraction to allow in some fresh air.

  Wolfie was worried, as Mandela had told him what a keep-fit fanatic he used to be with his amateur boxing and his early-morning runs around Soweto. He imagined now that Mandela intended leaving the flat to go for a run. What a breach of security that would be.

  Wolfie got up to go to the door, intending to remove the key. “What’s wrong?” said Mandela.

  “You can’t go running around here,” said Wolfie.

  “Who’s running around here?”

  “Well,” said Wolfie, “I thought you were dressing up to go running, like you did in Soweto.”

  “No!” said Mandela. “I’m going to do my exercises. I’m going to run, but I’m running on the spot.”

  That’s fine, then, thought Wolfie, and went back to bed. He dozed off only to be woken again a little while later by the sound of Mandela breathing heavily as he worked up a sweat, running in place. It seemed to Wolfie that this went on, literally, for a couple of hours, culminating in Mandela doing what Wolfie described as “frog jumps” all around the floor of the flat. Lucky they were on the ground floor.

  “Hey, but that’s keeping fit!” said Wolfie, from his bed.

  “You know what,” said Mandela, “come tomorrow you’re also going to run on the spot. You’re also going to keep fit.”

  Wolfie, who was not used to such a regime, was nearly dead after fifteen minutes the next morning but gradually built up to a full hour and was grateful for it. “The two of us must have looked an incongruous pair, one a big, broad-shouldered person and me a short stocky guy, both running on the spot. I imagine it must have looked very funny.”

  After a couple of days Mandela began to settle down to some work, setting himself up at the table by the window, where he could sit hidden from the street by the lace curtains. Wolfie realized his guest was interested in military matters and after an initial discussion he gave him a bo
ok about Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian soldier and theorist. When Mandela didn’t know who he was, Wolfie described him as being like the Karl Marx of military science.

  As Mandela’s reading tastes broadened, he sent out an appeal for books—the kind of banned material that could get people arrested. In London, a colleague in exile whom he barely yet knew, Mac Maharaj, received the requests for literature and was fascinated by them, not knowing who the books were for: works on guerrilla warfare, on partisan warfare and, at one stage, a call for books and articles on successful counter-insurgencies, especially the role of the British in Malaya. This was a joke to Mac, who was something of an urgent revolutionist himself and had been busy making his own studies of the tactics of Chairman Mao and Che Guevara. Here now somebody back home was interested in what the British were up to. (It was only when Mac was sent to Robben Island and met Mandela in 1965 that he discovered who the reader had been.)

  Wolfie heard a noise outside that morning and looked through the peephole to see the “flat boy” busy at work. He had not been into the apartment since Mandela arrived and even that could arouse suspicion. After taking a look at the young man, Mandela said it was time to invite him in and talk with him over a cup of tea. So the cleaner was ushered in and Wolfie made them both a cup of tea. He was a Thembu and Wolfie couldn’t understand what he was saying, but could see he was dumbstruck by the idea of a white man serving him and then sitting down to share the table with him.

  Soon, however, Mandela—who had the great gift, even then, of talking to everyone in the same easy manner—had the young man laughing and relaxed. Within a day or two Wolfie realized that Mandela had begun using the cleaner to run errands for him, posting letters, collecting shopping and so on.

  In the years to come, when it was safe—or safer—to talk, Wolfie would tell the story of a couple they knew whose marriage was in trouble. When Mandela heard, he had insisted on leaving his safe house to visit to try to ease their problems. Wild horses would not have dragged that couple’s name from Wolfie.

  They were, in fact, Adelaide and Paul Joseph, Indian activists who were friends as well as comrades of Mandela. Paul, a communist, had been a defendant in the Treason Trial and Adelaide was sometimes used by Mandela as a courier. He would turn up at the back door of their home in the Indian area of Fordsburg in a boiler suit, leaving a statement for her to deliver to the offices of the Rand Daily Mail. She had once opened the back door to throw out a bucket of water and all but sloshed it in Mandela’s face as he stood there unannounced. Mandela had a lifelong passion for Indian food and always loved Adelaide’s cooking, among others.

  The Josephs had married a month after Mandela had married Winnie in mid-1958. Both couples had quickly started families. Adelaide had become pregnant with twins but, by a tragic misfortune, one had been deprived of oxygen at birth and was severely disabled. He would die at the age of eleven in 1970.

  The birth of their son put a strain on their lives and Adelaide would get angry when Paul disappeared for days at a time as he became drawn into underground activities. She wouldn’t know where he was—he could’ve been arrested or in hospital or anything—but whenever she asked, she would be told, don’t worry, he’s fine. Eventually, she said, listen, I’ve had enough now, I want a divorce, I want to see Nelson, he can be my lawyer.

  She chased Kathrada out of the house when he tried to talk to her. “Get out of here, I don’t want to see you,” she told him. Wolfie came and she showed him to the door too. They sent Molly Fischer as well. “Why does it have to be Paul?” Adelaide wanted to know. “Why can’t it be someone who doesn’t have commitments, a family, a sick child at home?”

  All of this must have got back to Mandela, and a day was picked for his intervention. Wolfie turned up again at the Josephs’ home and told them to be ready at a certain time. He came back later, picked them up and drove them to another house in Fordsburg. Adelaide and Paul walked in, holding hands, not knowing what to expect, and there was Mandela sitting in this little room, waiting for them. He got up, cried, “Addie!” and gave her a big affectionate hug. “How are you, how are the children?” They sat together and exchanged pleasantries for a while, before Mandela said, “Well, I’m glad I’ve seen you and you are fine, now it’s OK, you can go home.”

  The Josephs left, puzzled. What was all that about? Only years later did they discover, from Wolfie, that Mandela had heard stories about them and was concerned for their marriage—not that he mentioned his concerns when he actually met them. Mandela kept his cards close to his chest, rarely discussing his own personal affairs with anyone, and he clearly assumed the same rule followed for the personal affairs of others.

  Now, in this new life, he had “too much privacy.” Wolfie would recall him being tearful as he talked sometimes of how much he missed his wife and the world he had left behind. Mandela had a vast network of friends across all races and Wolfie would often be called upon to take Mandela out or bring others to him once darkness fell. More than anyone, he wanted to see Winnie. They had many meetings, both at the flat and elsewhere. Wolfie made careful arrangements, instructing whoever was driving Winnie on the importance of switching cars and taking steps to avoid being followed.

  One driver was Rica Hodgson, the wife of Jack Hodgson. A Jewish couple living in more humble circumstances than some of their colleagues, they were both deeply committed to the struggle. Rica remembers how poor they all were—her and Jack, Winnie and the Josephs. Rica had brothers who ran a successful stall in Newtown market, where they were known as the “potato kings” or the “apple kings.” She would go there on Fridays to pick up unsold boxes of fruit and sackfuls of vegetables, which she would take to Adelaide Joseph’s home in Fordsburg. Winnie would be there too and the three of them would divide up the green groceries, for themselves and for others. Rica would then take Winnie over to Wolfie’s so that she could have a few hours alone with Mandela.

  Rica remembers Winnie’s flawless skin—she was the most beautiful woman. Men were mad about her. When Rica saw her again in 2008, Winnie was then in her mid-seventies, yet she remained beautiful. “You’ve still got wonderful skin,” Rica had told her.

  “That’s all I’ve got left, Rica,” Winnie had replied.

  Winnie had no doubt that the security surrounding her visits to her husband was necessary, as she “attracted the attention of the enemy” when Mandela went underground and found herself under round-the-clock surveillance. She had a friend who was a doctor in the maternity ward at Baragwanath Hospital. She would go there disguised as a woman in labor, then swap cars and lie down in the well of the car while they slipped away to take her to Mandela.

  She would miss him and he would miss her. “It was hurtful to meet under those circumstances, a reminder of the life we never had, a reminder that things were never normal.” Sometimes Winnie would bring their daughters, Zindzi, just a few months old, and Zenani, still a toddler but evidently half aware of what was going on. Mandela wrote to her from Robben Island:

  You will probably not remember an incident that moved me very much at the time and about which I never like to think. Towards the end of 1961 you were brought to the house of a friend and I was already waiting for you when you came. I was wearing no jacket or hat. I took you into my arms and for about ten minutes we hugged and kissed and talked. Then suddenly you seemed to have remembered something. You pushed me aside and started searching the room. In a corner you found the rest of my clothing. After collecting it you gave it to me and asked me to go home. You held my hand for quite some time, pulling desperately and begging me to return. It was a difficult moment for both of us. You felt I had deserted you and mummy and your request was a reasonable one… your age in 1961 made it difficult for me to explain my conduct to you and the worried expression that I saw in your face haunted me for many months thereafter. Luckily, however, you soon cooled down and we parted peacefully. But for days I was lost in thought wondering how I could show you that I had not failed you and th
e family.

  Walter Sisulu came to Wolfie’s flat several times, as did Joe Slovo. Wolfie went out and left them to talk but on one occasion when he returned Sisulu was still there, past midnight when it was too late for a black man to be on the streets, so Sisulu slept over and Wolfie stayed elsewhere.

  Mandela took some pleasure in turning up unexpectedly at people’s back doors, as he had with Adelaide Joseph. Wolfie remembered taking him to the home of a white Jewish couple, driving straight into their garage and the couple practically passing out with shock when they saw Mandela standing there.

  On another occasion Wolfie took Mandela to a house in the white suburb of Parktown for a meeting, perhaps with Winnie (Wolfie could not remember; she was not there anyway when he arrived with Mandela). The man of the house went off to make them drinks and as he came back down the passage they could hear the glasses clinking noisily on the tray. The man’s hands were shaking because he was so nervous. Wolfie gave Mandela a look—“We can’t stay”—and suddenly affected to recall another meeting they had forgotten. They left quickly. Their host had clearly known he had South Africa’s most wanted man sitting in his lounge.

  Sometimes Wolfie tried to come up with diversions for Mandela. When a young white woman, an old friend of Wolfie’s from Cape Town, came visiting, he said to her, would you like to meet Nelson Mandela? Who wouldn’t? Mandela was famous to the woman concerned for his reputation as one of the best-dressed men in Johannesburg, given to wearing beautiful clothes, very handsome and charismatic in his three-piece English tweeds.

  Amy Reitstein (later Thornton) was just twenty-nine at the time and worked as a nursery-school teacher, taking advantage of the long holidays to visit her sister in Johannesburg, possibly in June or July 1961. Wolfie came to collect her and she remembers driving into the basement garage where there was an elegant car parked, which she recalled as a Jaguar. Wolfie told her Mandela had been using it. The car belonged to another old soldier turned communist activist, the successful theater director Cecil Williams.