Winnie Mandela

by Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob

  Winnie realised that it would serve no purpose to appeal to Columbus, and that if she stayed in Tsolo she would be abducted and forced into the marriage. The chief’s Tembu tribesmen, on horseback and wearing the white blankets such an act prescribed, would wait for the right moment, kidnap her and keep her locked up until the chief’s son was brought from college, and they would be forced to get married. Columbus would have no choice but to accept the situation and the accompanying lobola. Winnie remembered the drama when her brother brought his wife to their home wrapped in a blanket, albeit with her cooperation. She had witnessed such ceremonies and seen the beseeching eyes of young brides forced into marriage as they emerged from captivity.

  Winnie knew she had only one option. She packed her bags, explained her predicament to Mr Zici and hastily left for Johannesburg. No matter what the consequences were, she would not risk being carried off to a degrading life by Chief Qaquali’s men.

  The old woman’s unthinking question had given Winnie her one chance to escape, but what she did was unthinkable for a young Pondo woman and a serious affront to the tradition of unquestioning obedience to her parents and elders. She knew her flight would cause both difficulties and embarrassment for her father, and wished she could have spared him.

  As soon as Winnie got back to Johannesburg she wrote to Columbus and begged his forgiveness for running away, but told him she could never enter into an arranged marriage. She was also able to tell him that she had been awarded her diploma in social work with distinction, and had won a prize as the best student. Winnie was one of the last graduates of the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, which was closed down by the government in terms of the Bantu Education Act soon afterwards. Later generations of black social workers were trained at what became known as ‘bush colleges’ in the various homelands.

  The years had sped by and Winnie was on the threshold of a career as a fully fledged social worker, but first she had to find a post. Shortly after the final results were announced, Professor Phillips summoned her to his office and told her, with a broad smile, that she had been awarded a much sought-after scholarship and could further her education by studying sociology at a university in America. Winnie was elated. Not only did this news exceed her wildest dreams, but she had no need to worry about whether she would find a suitable position. She was going to America! She immediately rushed to the post office to send a telegram with the news to her father and Hilda.

  Her student days over, Winnie moved into one of the hostel’s ten-bed dormitories, reserved for working women. She paid 11 shillings a week for her accommodation, excluding meals but including the use of communal recreation rooms and the kitchen, where they were allowed to prepare their own food. Adelaide Tsukudu, a staff nurse at Baragwanath Hospital, slept in the bed next to hers. She was a Tswana from a farm in the Vereeniging district, about ninety kilometres south of Johannesburg, and she and Winnie became close friends, their futures destined to be entwined in ways they could never have imagined at the time.

  Adelaide was already in love with Oliver Tambo, whom she would later marry, and Winnie went with her to many ANC meetings at Trades Hall. Winnie found the meetings exciting on both a political level and because they allowed her to meet the workers, the very people she would deal with as a social worker. It was at Trades Hall that she first heard of SACTU, the South African Congress of Trade Unions.

  Adelaide and her other friends were as excited as Winnie herself about the prospect of her trip to America, and they spent many happy hours fantasising over what life would be like in the USA. Typically, Winnie scoured the library for books and information on the far-off land that would be her home for the next few years.

  But, one day, the postman brought an official envelope, addressed to her, from Baragwanath Hospital. The hospital was on the outskirts of Soweto, the only one in the area for blacks and the largest in the southern hemisphere. As a student, Winnie had often gone to Bara, as it was known, and had even lectured there, but she was utterly astonished to find that the letter contained the offer of a post as the hospital’s first black medical social worker. Adelaide found her sitting on a bench in the hostel entrance hall, staring incredulously at the letter. Without a word, Winnie handed her the sheet of paper. Adelaide, always high-spirited and demonstrative, shrieked and threw her arms around Winnie in delight.

  Winnie was overwhelmed. She had already set her sights on further study in America, but what she really wanted was to be a social worker, and now she had the chance to do so, and in Johannesburg, which she loved. She would have to make an agonising choice, and after weighing all the pros and cons, consulted Professor Phillips. He listened to her carefully, but pointed out that ultimately only she could decide what was best for her. She wished she could have discussed her predicament with Professor Hough as well, but he was furthering his studies in Boston and would not return to South Africa until 1957.

  When Winnie wrote to her father for advice, he also counselled that she would have to make her own choice, but as Winnie read his letter she thought she could discern, between the lines, that her father believed their people needed her. She knew her decision would have a profound influence on her life, and in the end was absolutely certain that she had to accept the post at Baragwanath Hospital.

  When she told Professor Phillips of her decision, and her regret at not being able to accept the American scholarship, he assured her that she would probably be able to use it at a later date. Some years later, when the occasion did arise for her to study abroad, she again decided against it.

  Her fateful decision to stay in South Africa set her on the path of a meeting with Nelson Mandela – and a life of political activism, persecution and imprisonment.

  4

  Mandela wants to marry me

  THE NEW GENERATION of educated urban blacks quite naturally formed the black elite of the fifties. This burgeoning group of young professionals – lawyers, teachers, doctors, nurses and social workers – was changing the face of South Africa. They moved in a relatively small circle, and many were friends, colleagues or even members of the same extended families.

  When Winnie presented herself at Baragwanath Hospital in 1956 to take up the newly created position of medical social worker, she was a carefree, cheerful and self-confident young woman. Stories and photographs appeared in the newspapers, savouring the achievement of the girl from Pondoland who turned out to be both beautiful and gifted. Winnie sent the newspaper cuttings to Columbus and Hilda.

  She launched her career with determination and enthusiasm, and without the slightest premonition that her dreams and ambitions would be dashed by her own principles and choices. Before long she was flooded with cases and totally absorbed in her work: tracing patients’ relatives, sorting out problems related to accident claims and work-related injuries, and arranging funerals. In addition to being patient and compassionate, Winnie was cheerful and dedicated, and became a firm favourite with patients and staff alike. While doing fieldwork in her final year at college, Winnie had come to believe that there could be no worse poverty than she encountered in Tsolo, but what she found in the townships of Johannesburg was all the more shocking when contrasted against the abundance in the City of Gold. Acutely aware of the appalling conditions under which most people were forced to live and angered that this was the result of inequalities built into the system, she needed every grain of tenacity not to be demoralised.

  One of her duties was to visit new mothers at home after they had given birth at Bara. The conditions were often heart-rending. People lived in makeshift shacks thrown together from nothing but discarded corrugated iron and board, with stones holding down the roof and rags and newspapers stuffed into openings to keep out the elements. Malnutrition was common, not only because many families could not afford adequate food, but also because young, uneducated mothers were often ignorant about proper feeding. Research she carried out in Alexandra township to establish the infant mortality rate indicated an alarming ten deaths in
every 1 000. As a result of relationships between young urban women and migrant workers – who most often had wives at home – thousands of township babies were illegitimate. Without any means of support, many of the desperate mothers abandoned their newborn infants, often leaving them at Bara.

  The first time Winnie had to deal with an abandoned baby, she asked one of her friends, Matthew Nkoane, who was a senior reporter with the Golden City Post, to help her trace the mother by publishing the details of the case. It worked, and after reuniting mother and child, Winnie helped her to cope with the initial difficulties. After that, she and Matthew collaborated on more cases, tracing not only runaway mothers but also the relatives of elderly patients who had been left at the hospital. The Golden City Post also helped raise funds for the burial of patients who died at the hospital, but whose bodies remained unclaimed. Matthew later joined the breakaway Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), but despite their political differences he and Winnie remained friends for many years.

  One of the young doctors at Bara was Nthatho Motlana, who had studied for a BSc degree at Fort Hare before attending the medical school at the University of the Witwatersrand and going on to specialise in paediatrics. Like most of his peers at Fort Hare, he had joined the ANC Youth League and later became its secretary. During the Defiance Campaign he was arrested with Nelson Mandela and thousands of others, given a nine-month suspended sentence and then banned for five years. Motlana later became a leading political figure in Soweto. As chairman of the Committee of Ten, the sprawling township’s unofficial representative body, he was arguably the most prominent man in Soweto in the 1970s. He and his wife Sally became friends with both Winnie and Nelson Mandela, whom he had met at Fort Hare, and when Mandela was imprisoned he appointed Motlana one of the guardians of his children.

  It was inevitable that Winnie’s path would cross Motlana’s at Bara, and like the rest of the staff, he was impressed by her. They got on well, and in later years he would say he found working with her both stimulating and encouraging because she was always cheerful and laughed easily – valuable attributes when working under great strain and in difficult circumstances. Winnie had profound concern for the welfare of others, and would assist them even at the expense of her own comfort and safety. Motlana recalled that she always had an acute social conscience, and thought nothing of spending part of her own small salary to help others. She was only a young woman, but frequently spent her free time scouring the townships for the destitute and elderly who had no one to care for them. She often phoned Motlana in the middle of the night and asked him to treat someone who needed medical attention.

  For Winnie there was no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle, and when she was convinced that she was right she would not budge under any circumstances. Her colleagues at Bara admired the fact that she was prepared to stand up for her patients against those in authority, both inside and outside the system. Once, Dr Motlana diagnosed pellagra in a patient, and ordered him to take sick leave for three weeks. But the man’s employer refused to release him for the prescribed period, and the patient turned to Winnie, as his social worker, for help. Undaunted, the young woman wrote a scathing letter to the white employer justifying the doctor’s orders, and the patient got his sick leave.

  Throughout her years at college and during her first year of work, Winnie had remained romantically uninvolved. But in 1957 she met Barney Sampson, a gallant, fun-loving man, and soon they were regularly seen in one another’s company around town. Barney was working as a clerk and studying part time while living in a rented room in the backyard of a house in a white suburb. He was always well dressed, and he and Winnie, who had developed a taste for beautiful clothes, made a handsome couple. Barney was full of good humour and they laughed a lot, and Winnie enjoyed the company of her attentive and elegant companion. But her family did not approve. Sampson was obviously not a traditional black name, and they questioned Barney’s origins. Winnie was not at all bothered by his lineage, but she was concerned that he was almost completely apolitical, showing no interest in the need for change – something that was of major importance to her. She also didn’t like his submissive manner towards whites.

  Winnie had decided to stay at the Helping Hand Hostel in Jeppe, although it meant commuting daily to the hospital, which was a fair distance away. She was happy at the hostel, and enjoyed the company of the many young women of different cultures and backgrounds. Their diverse experiences gave her valuable insight into the myriad social problems challenging the black population, and especially those faced by women working in an urban environment. Life was often particularly hard for them, and Winnie learned a great deal about coping with the difficulties of daily life. She listened with real interest when they discussed the gross injustices of influx control measures, which dictated where blacks were allowed to live and work; their employment conditions; the struggle for a living wage; and the bus boycotts when fares were raised beyond the means of workers living on or below the breadline, and thousands walked to work rather than pay the higher fares. Young white women spent their time talking about relationships, marriage, their careers and entertainment, but at the hostel in Jeppe conversation centred on apartheid and the National Party government, which was widely detested.

  There was an old piano in the hall, and students who could play thumped away at it on evenings when they sang freedom songs, adding the names of their political leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. Winnie had heard a great deal about Tambo, not only because he was a prominent political figure, but also because he was courting her friend Adelaide. When they were in bed at night, Adelaide would talk and muse about the clever lawyer she was soon to marry, and who was in partnership with Mandela. Winnie first met Oliver when he arrived early to fetch Adelaide for a date, and she ran downstairs to tell him her friend would not be long.

  When Adelaide joined them, she told Oliver that, like him, Winnie was from Bizana. He had been educated at the Holy Cross Anglican Mission not far from the Madikizela home, and in keeping with tribal custom they were members of the same broad extended family. Oliver was delighted to meet a ‘niece’ from home, and Winnie was equally thrilled to learn that Adelaide, whom she already regarded as a sister, would be formally related to her through marriage to Oliver.

  What Winnie could not know was that the introduction to Tambo would lead to a meeting with Mandela, or that quite soon she would be courted by not one, but two prominent members of the royal Tembu line.

  Baragwanath Hospital’s reputation had spread throughout southern Africa, and it drew both patients and physicians from all over the subcontinent. Newly qualified doctors, white as well as black, were eager to serve as interns because the large number and diversity of cases offered invaluable experience. One day, the staff was told that a group of distinguished visitors from the Transkei would visit the hospital. The VIPs turned out to be Chief Kaiser Matanzima and a group of his councillors. When they came to Winnie’s office to talk about her work, she reminded Matanzima that they had met at Ncora. He appeared not to remember her, but as they talked he invited her to run the welfare centre at Tsolo. Winnie agreed to consider the offer, but made it clear that she enjoyed working at Bara. Matanzima was insistent, proposing that they discuss the matter over dinner, and arranged that one of his advisers would pick her up after work.

  When Winnie told Adelaide why she wouldn’t be going back to the hostel with her that evening, Adelaide immediately speculated that Matanzima had his eye on her. Winnie dismissed the suggestion, insisting that the meeting would be purely professional. She was fetched in a battered green Oldsmobile and taken to house 8115, a corner property in Orlando West. Matanzima had a candlelight dinner waiting, and she began to think that perhaps Adelaide had been right, after all. Winnie didn’t know it, but the house and car belonged to Mandela, and since he and Matanzima had grown up together, it was only natural that Mandela would place both his home and his car at Kaiser’s disposal during his visit.

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p; As she dined with Matanzima that night, Winnie had not the slightest inkling that within the year she would be the mistress of that very house, and the wife of Nelson Mandela.

  After returning to the Transkei, a clearly smitten Matanzima wrote Winnie an endless stream of letters, but she continued to make light of his attentions – until she heard that his councillors were preparing to approach Columbus for her hand. She realised that her innocent but naive responses had been misinterpreted, and was determined to stop a second attempt to force her into an unwanted marriage. She had no wish to become a rural wife, and stopped writing to Matanzima immediately. But she was about to be swept off her feet from another, totally unexpected quarter.

  One afternoon, Nelson Mandela gave his friend Diliza Mji, a medical student, a lift from Orlando to the University of the Witwatersrand. While passing Baragwanath, he noticed a young woman waiting at the bus stop, and was immediately struck by her beauty. He briefly considered turning around and driving past her again, just to see her more clearly, but he didn’t. But he couldn’t forget her lovely face.

  Soon afterwards, Winnie went to the Johannesburg regional court to support a colleague who had been assaulted by the police, and who happened to be represented by Mandela. When the tall, handsome lawyer walked into court, Winnie heard spectators whisper his name, and she thought he cut an awesome figure.

  Around the same time, Winnie was given a lift back to the hostel one evening by Oliver and Adelaide. They stopped along the way to buy food for Adelaide, who was hungry, but Oliver found he had forgotten to bring any money. Then he noticed his friend Nelson in the shop, and told Adelaide to let him pay, which Mandela did. When he and Adelaide came out of the shop, Oliver introduced Winnie, remarking that Mandela must surely have seen her picture in World or Drum, since she was always ‘dancing about’ their pages. Mandela was dumbstruck. It was the beautiful young woman he had seen at the bus stop. In later years he would say that he had no idea whether such a thing as love at first sight existed, but that he knew, the moment he met Winnie, that he wanted her for his wife.