During May, June and July, Shaka’s impi moved south, killing and plundering as they went. The inland division under Manyundela, one of the king’s favourite generals, attacked and virtually destroyed the Tembu. But Manyundela was killed in the battle, and a raging Shaka ordered the execution of hundreds of warriors for not preventing his death.
For the campaign against the Pondo, Shaka selected his senior general, Mdlaka, and a force of some 10 000 warriors. As word of their advance spread, the Pondo fled south. The Zulu impi moved as far as the Umtata River, destroying the deserted kraals as they swept through the region. On the return journey, as they crossed the Umzimvubu River and moved out of Faku’s country, the Pondo thought the threat had passed, but as they emerged from hiding, the Zulus turned around and attacked and captured Faku’s capital, along with 30 000 head of cattle.
It was the aftermath of this campaign that was discovered by Major General Dundas, Civil Commissioner of Albany and Somerset, when he arrived in Pondoland in August with a small scouting force, the first military expedition involving the British 1820 Settlers in South Africa. Among the men riding with Dundas were four Bowker brothers, one of whom, Holden, recorded the out-come of the battle and the blood-curdling results of Faku’s encounter with Shaka’s forces.
By the end of July 1828, a defeated and war-weary Faku was moving towards the Cape Colony with the remnants of his people. Ironically, Shaka the conqueror held the vanquished Faku in high esteem. Henry Francis Fynn, the Zulu king’s famous English adviser, chronicled Shaka’s overtures to Faku:
Owing to the knowledge I had of Faku, the King of the Pondos, Shaka asked me one morning if I thought, were he to withdraw his army, Faku would consent to becoming his tributary. I replied in the affirmative and recommended, as an inducement, the return of the girls who had been captured and sent to him by the army, and refraining from destroying more corn. To this he assented. He accordingly sent messengers to Faku with proposals for peace, at the same time returning the females as proof of his bona fides; he, moreover, directed his army to withdraw and to stop destroying the corn. Several chiefs of petty tribes in Faku’s neighbourhood, with messengers from Faku, returned with the army to thank him for his liberality in thus sparing their lives. They were rewarded with presents of cattle selected from those that had been taken from them.1
Faku’s wisdom and pragmatic leadership in accepting Shaka’s proposals of peace and cooperation were an important reason why the Pondo managed to survive as a cohesive unit.
Shaka was murdered in September 1828 by his brothers Mhlangana and Dingane, and Mbopa, a high councillor and major-domo of his royal kraal. After a violent quarrel with Dingane in March 1829, Nqetho, a chieftain of the Qwabe tribe, rounded up his people and fled south. He clashed with a number of clans and tribes en route to Pondoland, where he encamped near Faku, the paramount chief, who had become a force to be reckoned with. His land had been overrun in waves by Zulu warriors, Zulu refugees, the Ngwaneni and British troops, and finally he was confronted by the Qwabe tribe, but he had built up substantial forces, strong enough to drive the Qwabe back. Nqetho had no choice but to return to Zululand, where Dingane ordered him killed.
In stark contrast to the hostility that governed their associations with other black groups, the Xhosa leaders, including Faku, generally opted for non-aggressive and diplomatic cooperation with the white settlers in the region. When Petrus Lafras Uys inspected the land beyond the Great Fish River, which was the domain of Hintsa, the Xhosa chieftain generously gave him permission to settle in the northern reaches, where the Pondo had settled. When Uys arrived, Faku welcomed him.
The Pondo king’s cooperation with the white settlers was not the first example of such collaboration by his people. His ancestry indicated a fairly significant injection of white blood – proof of more than mere business relations between the Pondo and the white settlers.
The east coast of South Africa was the scene of many shipwrecks during the eighteenth century. On the night of 4 August 1782, the East Indiaman Grosvenor ran aground when the captain, certain that the ship was still some 300 miles offshore, ignored the urgent warnings of a seaman on watch. The captain’s next mistake was to estimate that the shipwrecked survivors would reach Cape Town in no more than two weeks. They set off in high spirits, but the captain’s calculations of distance were even worse on land than at sea. After four months, six of the survivors reached a frontier farm hundreds of miles from Cape Town, having suffered severe exposure and hunger. A search party found another dozen, but the rest disappeared without trace.
Rumour persisted that black chieftains had taken some of the missing women as their wives, and, in 1790, an expedition sent to investigate these reports made an astonishing discovery. All the inhabitants of a kraal on the Umgazana River, some four hundred in all, were half-castes – the descendants of three elderly white women who had survived another, unidentified shipwreck as children years before. Some of the inhabitants of the kraal had recognisable English names like Bessie, Betty and Tommy, and others went by adulterations of Geoffrey, Thomas and Michael.
But in time, traces of the blood that had been mixed with those of the black clans all but disappeared. Later expeditions searched for the kraal of half-castes, but it was never found again. By the nineteenth century, very few of the blacks along the coast could trace their descent from shipwrecked whites. Among those who could was Faku.
One of the strongest Pondo clans is the Ngutyana, from whence came Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. From about 1820 to 1850 her great-grandfather, Madikizela, was a powerful warrior chieftain in the Umkomaas area of Natal, but the Ngutyana eventually settled near Izingolweni between Port Edward and the Transkei village of Bizana.
Madikizela earned a reputation as a fierce and merciless leader and seized large tracts of land and a substantial number of warriors and cattle. But even he was no match for Shaka’s might and, caught up in the death throes of the mfecane, he moved south with his followers and cattle, and settled in Pondoland, where he raided Faku’s kingdom. The wise Faku, whose diplomacy with Shaka had safeguarded his people’s survival, decided it was better to have Madikizela as a friend than a foe. He bowed the knee to the marauder and offered him his sister as a wife, and the Madikizelas came to be known as ‘the nephews of Faku’.2
A century after the heyday of Faku, a little girl was born to the Madikizela clan. Her name was Nomzamo, but the world would come to know her as Winnie Mandela.
Despite traditional norms and general compliance with their subordinate role, Xhosa women were held in high esteem, and it was not uncommon for them to be accepted in leadership positions. One such example was Yese, mother of Ngqika, chief of the Rarabe tribe.
Yese is the subject of the first documented history of the enormous power and influence Xhosa women could exercise within their customarily patriarchal society. She also offers another example of an intimate interracial relationship.
Yese was a Tembu, the tribe from which brides were traditionally chosen for Xhosa royals. Said to have been a great beauty when she was young, she became extremely fat as she matured, and as her girth expanded, so did her influence over her son and their people.
Legend has it that Yese appeared to Mlawu, the son and heir of the tribal chief, Rarabe, from a cloud of mist on a mountain, and became his wife. In 1782, when their son, Ngqika, was three years old, both Mlawu and Rarabe were killed in battle against the Tembu. Regency over Rarabe’s tribe was entrusted to Yese and Ngqika’s uncle, Ndlambe, until the boy came of age.
Yese’s power and special status were unique in Xhosa history. Many of the Rarabe saw her as a chief and her position was never questioned, not even when she was seen to be married to a white hunter, Coenraad du Buis, who fled to Ngqika’s domain after involvement in an uprising against the British who offered a reward of £200 for his capture, dead of alive. He was given protection by Ngqika for several years and subsequently became a councillor and served as chief adviser to Ngqika. But Ngqika d
id nothing without first consulting his mother, and treated her with the utmost reverence. Du Buis apparently produced a sizeable clan of half-castes, and it is generally accepted that this is the origin of some of the white blood still evident today in many fair-skinned Xhosas.
Yese broke the mould of Xhosa women as ‘the workers, the hewers of wood and drawers of water. They tilled the gardens, built the huts, prepared the food and cared for the children. On journeys, they carried. Nevertheless, any woman of strong mind and determination imposed herself forcefully, and on every level, whether she was a commoner or royal. This is continuously evident, from Ngqika’s mother all the way to Winnie Mandela.’3
In 1894, nine years after the British established their dominion over Tembuland, they annexed Pondoland, making the Pondo the last of the tribes to come under colonial rule in South Africa. During Faku’s reign, all the land bordered by the Umzimkulu and the Umtata Rivers, the Indian Ocean and the Drakensberg mountains, was Pondoland, but during Shaka’s reign of terror, the izidukos [clans] scattered, and many never returned to the land of their ancestors. Faku, chief of the largest and wealthiest of all the tribes, retreated with his followers into the Umgazi area. In 1842, following the death of Dingane, they were able to resettle part of their ancestral land thanks to an agreement negotiated with the British by the missionary and politician Theophilus Shepstone. In return, Shepstone extorted from the Pondo a paramount chieftainship.
When Nelson Mandela was practising as a lawyer, he found a copy of the treaty recorded in a Government Gazette:
We hereby for ourselves, our heirs and successors and for and on behalf of our respective tribes acknowledge and profess that from and after the execution hereof Theophilus Shepstone, Esquire, is and hereafter shall be, the Paramount and Exclusive Chief and Ruler of ourselves and the tribes belonging to us, as also of the country or territory now occupied or hereafter to be occupied by us or any of us or any part or portion thereof.
And we acknowledge Theophilus Shepstone, Esquire, as such Supreme Chief or Ruler, as effectively and to all intents and purpose, as firmly as if he had been or had become such Paramount Chief or Ruler by succession according to our laws or usage.
The treaty also gave Shepstone ‘the full and complete control of Port St John’s, [the trade line to the Cape], with power and authority to do and perform every act and matter necessary to the proper supervision and management of matters of such Port, short of fiscal alienation to one mile on each side of the river nor extend up its course beyond the influence of the tide’.
Faku signed the treaty on 5 June 1854, and the heads of six other clans – the Nikwe, Mbulu, Xesibe, Boto, Twana and the Ngutyana of Madikizela – signed identical agreements.
During Faku’s lifetime, the British effectively demanded only a de jure presence in the region, but his descendants were plagued by problems inherent to the treaty that ultimately led to dispossession of their land.
The Tembu, who had dared to defy – and beat – Shaka, were incorporated into the Pondo, and Faku, in turn, held in some esteem by Shaka, bowed the knee to Madikizela.
This august chess game of shifting power, intrigue and alliances forms the backdrop for the majestic history of the Pondo tribe and the Ngutyana clan – and that of the most famous woman in South Africa’s recent history, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
She hailed from an imposing line of authentic and indisputable leaders. During a life beset with tragedy and trial, she ceaselessly demonstrated the well-chronicled characteristics of her ancestors, who were fearless and autocratic, with a natural penchant to command, and typified their dauntless courage, stubborn pride and instinctive aptitude for survival against all odds.
Winnie Madikizela was to the manner born.
PART I
Winnie
Madikizela
‘Without courage, all other virtues become meaningless.’
– Winston Churchill
1
A country girl
SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 1934 broke exactly the same way as the day before, and the day before that. It was no different from any other day in early spring. The large Madikizela homestead at Idutywa in the Bizana district of the Transkei lay bathed in deep, pre-dawn silence. Gradually, out of the blanching darkness, came the sounds that announced a new day: the twittering and chattering of birds, cocks crowing at dawn; as the light spread, the cool earth warmed up rapidly under Africa’s forbidding sun.
When Nomathansanqa Gertrude Madikizela went into labour, there still was nothing to indicate that the day might mark something special.
The new baby’s first cry should have elicited happy exclamations and congratulations. Instead, initial reaction to the birth of Gertrude’s fifth child was mute disappointment. It was a girl. Yet again, a girl. They had all been hoping for a boy. The tiny baby’s paternal grandmother made no attempt to hide her displeasure as she told the weary mother: ‘You are wasting our time.’ The little girl’s father, Kokani Columbus Madikizela, was equally unenthusiastic, whether from a lifetime habit of respectfully agreeing with his mother, or genuine disappointment. ‘I’m tired of girls,’ he said. ‘I want a boy.’ Gertrude, too, had been praying for another son. Her eldest child was a boy, but Pondo custom dictated that a mother’s possessions were inherited by her youngest son. If Gertrude’s position in the family – indeed her life – was to be at all meaningful, her contribution passed on to her descendants, she needed to bear a second boy.
Little could the Madikizelas have known that the tiny girl to whom they had given such a miserly welcome would become an icon of twentieth-century South Africa, and leave an imprint larger and more important than any other woman – or Madikizela male – on the country’s history.
Columbus Madikizela did not register the baby, because it was not compulsory to record black births. Three months later, Columbus, Gertrude, the grandparents and extended family gathered at the Methodist Church in Idutywa, and in the small corrugated iron building the new baby was christened Nomzamo Zaniewe Winifred. Columbus admired the Germans for their discipline and industrial achievements, and demonstrated his reverence for both the industrious Aryans and the missionaries who had led him to Christianity by calling his daughter Winifred, the ancient Germanic name meaning ‘friend of peace’. Though rarely used, her first name, Nomzamo, would prove prophetic – it means ‘she who will endure trials’. When she went to school, she became known as Winnie.
Winnie Madikizela’s birthplace was an idyllic spot in a country that was heading towards great turmoil. The Pondoland of her childhood was a luxuriant patchwork in shades of green: vast plains of savannah, cultivated blocks of maize and other crops, and clumps of trees. As far as the eye could see, one hill after another rolled toward the horizon under a jolt-blue sky. The abundance of rivers and streams meant that Pondoland was green in all seasons. There were no roads or power pylons and the only signs of human presence were traditional clay huts, round and white with thatched roofs, strewn across the landscape like scattered pebbles. Every settlement had a cluster of huts of various sizes, depending on the status and prosperity of the family, each one used for a specific purpose – sleeping, cooking, storage, socialising.
The world of the Pondo was prosperous, peaceful and orderly, steeped in the dictates of countless generations. But it was changing. Colonisation was followed by an invasion of missionaries from Europe, traders and farmers, and the demand for labour, land and even the cattle owned by the blacks was threatening a traditional way of life. When the settlers encountered hostility that resulted in skirmishes with the Xhosa, soldiers with superior weaponry were sent to the Transkei to protect them, leading to almost a century of acrimony and bloody warfare. The Xhosa were finally subdued and then systematically impoverished as the discovery of diamonds and gold towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the fledgling industries that mushroomed on the Witwatersrand, gave rise to new demands for cheap labour.
Economic and industrial progress in southern Afri
ca carried a price tag of inevitable upheaval for the indigenous population, seemingly unobserved, and certainly unrecorded, by whites. Land was taken from communities who were forced to obey restrictions and pay taxes, which they neither understood nor could afford. To earn the money they needed, they were obliged to find jobs in the mining and industrial sectors, which in turn doomed them to a life as migrant labourers. Their tried and trusted way of life was receding into oblivion, and the future would bring little but disrupted communities, growing poverty and racial disharmony.
The Madikizela home was within a few hours of Durban, a modern city and popular tourist destination famous for its wide sandy beaches fringing the warm waves of the Indian Ocean. Less visited but equally picturesque was the neighbouring Wild Coast. Port St John’s, subject of a treaty signed by Winnie’s great-grandfather and Theophilus Shepstone, had been developed as a coastal resort, but – both under colonial rule and apartheid – was reserved for whites only. Even though it was so close, hardly anyone from Bizana had ever been to the coast. For them, the vast blue water of the Indian Ocean and the endless stretch of white sand outlining its edge was the fabric of legend: distant, unreal.
In the 1930s, the district of Bizana was seen as remote, as were most settlements in the hills of Pondoland. But the footprints of the flourishing white population were spreading all across South Africa. The small towns and fertile farms that dotted the countryside were in white hands, and the land the Xhosa had cherished as their own for generations was administered by white officials enforcing their laws with total disregard for ancient traditions and customs.
The life of the rural Pondo was spartan. Winnie’s early childhood was no different than that of any other peasant girl, but the Madikizelas were more privileged than most. Though not affluent, the family was influential and lived comfortably. Her grandfather, Chief Mazingi, had been a prosperous trader and farmer with large expanses of land and twenty-nine wives, and his numerous residences and families were spread between eMbongweni and Idutywa. His land produced a good harvest of maize, and provided grazing for his large herds of sheep and cattle.
Winnie Mandela Page 2