Winnie had avoided sending her daughters to safety elsewhere, but now she realised she had to take steps to protect them. The problem was how to find a school for them, when she was not allowed to travel. Once again, she turned to shebeen owner Elija Msibi, who not only drove to Swaziland to find a suitable school for Zeni and Zindzi, but enrolled his own daughters at the same institution as support for the girls.
Sending her children away was one of the hardest things Winnie had ever had to do, but she knew she had no choice. The two little girls cried bitterly when they had to leave her, and Winnie felt as though her heart would break. She always believed it was the stress of parting with her daughters that caused the hypertension and heart condition she subsequently developed.
Zeni and Zindzi were desperately unhappy at the Convent of Our Lady of Sorrows, which was run on austere discipline that left no room for compassion. Winnie had become involved in a programme to organise correspondence courses for Nelson and the other Robben Island prisoners, backed by Sir Robert Birley, a former headmaster of Eton College, who was a visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. His wife, Elinor, became friends with Winnie, and when she heard about the problems the children were having at school, Lady Birley arranged that they transfer to Waterford, an exclusive school in Swaziland with an excellent reputation. The fees were way beyond Winnie’s means, but Lady Birley and Helen Joseph organised funds to pay them. Winnie treasured Elinor Birley’s kindness and assistance, and their friendship continued long after the Birleys returned to England.
The cost of Winnie’s dedication to the struggle was mounting, but she had embarked on a journey from which there was no return. She had not chosen the quest, it had chosen her. Having grown up with an awareness of injustice, encouraged by her father’s fervour to bring about change and her own attempts to challenge the system ever since she became a social worker, it was impossible for her to turn away from the suffering and oppression of her people. Prevented from formally practising her profession, she improvised and helped those in need whenever and however she could.
Winnie’s spirit was far from broken, but she was amazed that the authorities would waste endless time and financial resources contriving schemes and frivolous charges against her, which constantly failed. It took a long time for her to understand that every incident was a cog in a slow-moving wheel that was intended to ultimately pulverise her. Once, woken at four in the morning and told that she was being arrested, she closed her bedroom door while dressing. A white policeman, Detective Sergeant Fourie, pushed open the door and grabbed Winnie by the shoulder. Incensed by the intrusion, and without stopping to think of the consequences, she grabbed him and threw him to the floor. As he fell, he pulled her dressing table down on top of himself. Six of his colleagues waiting outside carried her bodily to a police vehicle, wearing only one stocking and one shoe, and took her to prison. Fourie’s neck was fractured, but he recovered. Winnie was charged with resisting arrest, and when the case was heard two months later, her advocate, George Bizos, cautioned her sternly that he wanted her to behave like a lady in front of the magistrate, not like an Amazon. Winnie was a calm and eloquent witness, and the magistrate acquitted her, ruling the police testimony contradictory.
For two years, Winnie had been prevented from visiting Nelson on Robben Island. In July 1966, she was finally given permission to go, but only on condition that she had a pass, or reference book. She had gone to prison in the mid-fifties rather than carry a pass, and she knew the condition was aimed at humiliating her and Mandela, who had burned his own pass in defiance. But she was desperate to see him, and capitulated for the sake of the greater good. People who saw her at the airport on her way to Robben Island, wearing a long, pale-blue dress and turban, proud and regal as a queen, could not guess at the hardships she was experiencing.
She hardly recognised the island as the place where she had visited Nelson two years earlier. As more and more political prisoners were incarcerated, facilities for visitors had been upgraded and telephones installed. But warders still monitored every word, and sessions were still limited to thirty minutes.
After the long separation, during which they could exchange only a handful of heavily censored letters, the atmosphere between Winnie and Madiba was almost strained. What, after all, could one say in half an hour after a two-year interval? He noticed that she looked thin and drawn. They touched briefly on the children’s schooling, Nelson’s mother, who was not well, and their finances. To overcome the ban on discussion of non-family matters, they used clan names and nicknames to deceive the warders. The ANC was ‘the church’, and mention of ‘priests’ and ‘sermons’ allowed Winnie to pass on valuable information about the struggle. All too soon, the painful moment of parting was upon them and the warder yelled ‘Time up!’ Winnie mouthed a quick goodbye, and then she was gone.
In truth, Madiba knew more about Winnie’s life than anyone would have thought possible, taking into account the ban on newspapers, the almost total absence of information and carefully censored letters that were part of life on the island. He knew that she had been under constant harassment since her last visit, that her siblings were being persecuted by the security police, and that the authorities intimidated anyone who gave consideration to moving into the house with her. Curiously, any negative publicity about her was brought to his attention. More than once, when he returned to his cell from the limestone quarry where the prisoners performed hard labour every day, he would find a selection of neatly cut newspaper clippings on his bed.
Winnie’s infrequent visits to Robben Island were governed by petty and timeconsuming rules. She was allowed to travel to and from Johannesburg only by air, and thus denied the option of cheaper transport. On arrival at Cape Town, she had to take the shortest and swiftest route to Caledon Square, the main police station, to sign various documents recording her visit. She was tailed by security police along each step of the journey, and on returning from the island, she had to go back to Caledon Square and sign more papers before going directly to the airport. After her second visit, she fell foul of the law once again. It was raining and bitterly cold, and she had to make the trip from the island on the deck of the ferry, as she was not allowed to mix with the other passengers. As she stepped ashore, still struggling with the emotions stirred by the unsatisfactory and all too brief time spent with Nelson, someone called to her, asking her name and address. She ignored him, thinking it might be a newspaper reporter, but it turned out to be a policeman, and she was duly charged with failing to identify herself or report her arrival in Cape Town. She was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment on the charge of refusing to identify herself, and one year for not reporting her presence in Cape Town. All but four days of the sentence was suspended.
In Madiba’s next letter, he reminded Winnie how much he cared for her, how unbreakable the bond between them was, and how courageous she was. It was both a love letter and a reaffirmation of the emotional support she so sorely needed.
In September 1966, HF Verwoerd, the arch-enemy of the oppressed, was assassinated in parliament by an apparently deranged messenger of mixed parentage. Hope that the political situation in South Africa might improve flared briefly after his death, but his successor, BJ Vorster, who had been interned on suspicion of sabotage against the government during World War II, soon snuffed the flame of optimism by giving the police even more extensive powers, and establishing the infamous Bureau of State Security (BOSS).
Winnie consoled herself with Mandela’s credo that unjust laws were meant to be defied, and carried on with her political work in secret. The ANC was targeting the younger generation, establishing cells throughout the country, and organising study groups and lectures to teach them the organisation’s doctrines. Almost another year would pass before she was again granted permission to visit Mandela in June 1967. By then, they both knew that they could not take visits every six months for granted. Warder James Gregory later wrote that Mandela was clearly very much
in love with his strikingly beautiful wife, who was always elegantly dressed and dignified. Gregory also admitted being surprised when he saw tears rolling down Winnie’s cheeks during their visits – something he had not expected from this woman whose pride was as fierce as that of a lioness.
In the spring of 1968, Mandela received his first – and only – visit from his mother, who was accompanied by his sister Mabel, his eldest daughter Maki and youngest son, Makgatho. Because they had travelled all the way from Transkei, the prison authorities agreed to allow them an extra fifteen minutes together. Mandela was concerned about his mother, who had lost weight and looked ill. With a sense of dread, he realised that he would probably not see her again, and he was right. She died of a heart attack a few weeks later. He sought permission to attend her funeral, but was refused.
Nosekeni Mandela was buried in October 1968, and her funeral, filled with pomp and ceremony, formed a stark contrast to her modest life. She had been a quiet and retiring person, but her death was exploited by those with political motives, and her funeral became an extension of South Africa’s political battlefield. Because she had been a member of a royal house, senior representatives of the so-called Transkei government attended the funeral to honour her both as a kinswoman and the mother of a prominent political figure, albeit their rival. The police had never visited Mandela’s mother in life at her home in Qunu, but they turned out in force around her grave, to spy on her daughter-in-law, friends of her son and other family members.
Winnie was given permission to attend the funeral, and at the graveside she wept bitterly, as much for the loss of her mother-in-law as for her husband, denied the opportunity to pay his last respects to the woman who had borne him. It was three months before Winnie could visit Madiba and give him details about his mother’s illness and the funeral ceremony. It would be another two years before they spoke again – but mercifully, when they parted, neither had any idea that Winnie was about to face her worst ordeal yet.
11
A year in solitary confinement
JOHANNESBURG WAS A CESSPOOL of informers, and Winnie was surrounded by spies. The security police crackdowns had pushed all black political activity underground, but Winnie remained high on the list of suspects plotting the overthrow of the apartheid government. They saw her as both an intermediary between the ANC leadership on Robben Island and the grassroots supporters, and as an instrument that could be used to demoralise Mandela. They spent an inordinate amount of energy hatching plans to achieve their objectives: neutralising Winnie and breaking Mandela’s power.
Winnie yearned for the man she loved, for his support and the normal life that was lost to her. ‘I had been looking forward to leading a married life one day and having a home; it sustains you,’ she said.1 She knew her only hope of remaining sane was to focus her attention on helping others – particularly those with ANC links. While assisting the families of detainees, she heard about a large group of political prisoners at Nylstroom, most of them from Port Elizabeth, 1 120 kilometres away. Obviously, the distance prevented them from receiving many visitors, and Winnie heard that they also received little mail. Knowing that families were often deliberately not told where their loved ones were taken after being arrested, and how distressing it was for prisoners not to hear from their families, she set to work.
She managed to find out the names of the long-distance prisoners and enlisted the help of various women in Soweto, who wrote to them as ‘family members’ and visited when they could, taking basic necessities such as soap, toothpaste and toilet paper, just to make their incarceration a little more bearable. Through Helen Joseph and the Anglican Church, she also arranged that those who could not be visited were sent money by postal order, ostensibly from family members. Maude Katzenellenbogen volunteered to help, and Winnie’s small efforts to provide humanitarian aid for those in distress were added to a growing list of transgressions that would soon be used against her. In due course, she would learn the truth about Katzenellenbogen, under truly horrific circumstances. Winnie also enlisted the aid of one of her friends, Mohale Mahanyele, who worked for the US Information Agency, to print and distribute pamphlets for the ANC. This, too, would backfire.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the security police recognised Winnie’s strength and ability to lead, and they feared her influence. That was the impetus for their relentless efforts to crush her, and according to undercover agent Gordon Winter, General ‘Lang Hendrik’ van den Bergh, the head of BOSS, was hell-bent on stifling the political life of this troublesome woman.
On the night of 12 May 1969, Winnie woke to the familiar banging and shouting that signified a raid. She rose with pounding heart, and as she opened the door, policemen poured into the house, searching every corner.
There was unusual excitement when the raid yielded a copy of Black Power and Liberation – A Communist View, but even textbooks Mandela had used as a law student, his typewriter and the clothes he had worn during his trials were seized. Zeni and Zindzi were home for the school holidays, and the police lifted them, terrified, out of their beds and searched the mattresses and bed linen. After turning the entire house upside down, Major Johannes Viktor, the officer in charge, ordered Winnie to pack a bag, as she was being detained and would not be coming back ‘for a long time’. Having been dragged off to prison at all hours of the day or night, Winnie had taken to keeping a small suitcase packed with necessities next to her front door, so that she could grab it on the way out when needed.
‘Detention means that midnight knock when all about you is quiet,’ she said later. ‘It means those blinding torches shone simultaneously through every window of your house before the door is kicked open. It means the exclusive right the Security Branch have to read each and every letter in the house. It means paging through each and every book on your shelves, lifting carpets, looking under beds, lifting sleeping children from mattresses and looking under the sheets. It means tasting your sugar, your mealie-meal and every spice on your kitchen shelf. Unpacking all your clothing and going through each pocket. Ultimately, it means your seizure at dawn, dragged away from little children screaming and clinging to your skirt, imploring the white man dragging Mummy away to leave her alone.’2
Zeni and Zindzi began to cry, but the police would neither allow her to comfort them nor make arrangements for their care. Ignoring her heartfelt pleas that she could not leave the children there, unattended, they jostled Winnie to the door, where rough hands prised the screaming children from their mother’s side and someone said they would drive them to the home of one of Winnie’s sisters. Winnie was taken away, her daughters’ terrified wailing still ringing in her ears. Zindzi and Zeni were nine and ten years old respectively, their father was in prison and they would not see their mother again for eighteen months. Winnie was not yet thirty-five and Mandela had been on Robben Island for five years.
When the police refused her permission to contact her lawyer, relatives, friends – or even her clergyman – Winnie began to steel herself for what she knew must come next. In terms of the Terrorism Act, No. 83 of 1967, the brainchild of Prime Minister John Vorster, the South African police could arrest anyone suspected of committing acts that endangered the maintenance of law and order, or of conspiring or inciting people to commit such acts. The legislation was structured in such a way that almost any opponent of the South African government – including children – could be arrested without a warrant, detained for an indefinite period of time, interrogated and kept in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer or relative.
To all intents and purposes, Winnie Mandela had ceased to exist. Only her small daughters knew that she had been taken away by the police. She was taken to Pretoria and placed in solitary confinement. Winnie didn’t know that she was one of twenty-two people arrested in coordinated countrywide raids that night. They were the first detainees held under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act.
When the door of her cell clanged shut, Winnie strained her ears, but all
she heard was an occasional faint cough and the distant sound of prison doors slamming open or shut.
News of her detention reached Mandela almost immediately, but it took attorney Joel Carlson the best part of a day to find out where Winnie was being held, and on what charges.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote: ‘Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality – all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.’
The United Nations’ definition of torture is ‘aggravated and deliberate forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. Torture may take the form of beatings, rape, sleep deprivation, electric shocks, burning, mutilation, extended solitary confinement, starvation, sham executions and more. In apartheid South Africa, it was primarily employed as a form of social control, subjugating entire communities through terror and intimidation by destroying the trust upon which nations are built.
For the next seventeen months, Winnie Mandela would be subjected to extreme emotional, psychological and physical torture. For most of this time, she was held in isolation in an icy cage: four cement walls, a cement floor and a cement ceiling, lit by a single naked light bulb. Her bed was a coir mat on the floor, and three filthy blankets suffused with the stench and stains of urine were her only protection against the biting chill of early winter. When she unfolded a blanket, bugs crawled over her arms and legs. She flung the blanket into a corner, but then realised she would have to use it. Gritting her teeth, she rolled up one blanket to use as a pillow and slept under the other two. The only other items in the cell were a plastic bottle of water, a mug and a sanitary bucket without a handle. Winnie, whose standards of cleanliness bordered on the pathological, was revolted by the conditions. In addition to using the bucket as a toilet, she had to wash over it, which she did by pouring a little water from her one-litre ration onto her hands and vigorously rubbing her hands and face, then pouring a little water onto her panties to sponge her body, because there was nothing else.
Winnie Mandela Page 19