The evidence, however, was almost totally devoid of detail in support of the charges. Most of the eighty state witnesses were police officers or detainees who had been coerced into giving evidence against their comrades. The defence showed that many of them had been tortured and forced to make incriminating statements, or were promised indemnity if their evidence was satisfactory. Two witnesses, Nondwe Mankahla and Shanti Naidoo, were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment when they refused to testify for the state. Shanti’s brother, Indris, was also a prisoner on Robben Island, and Shanti had been held in solitary confinement for months and been forced to stand for days under interrogation. Winnie’s sister, Nonyaniso, told the judge that she had been threatened with ten years in prison if she did not testify against Winnie, and said she had been so threatened and brainwashed during interrogation that she now found it difficult to distinguish between the truth and what the police had instructed her to say. Five other witnesses for the state admitted under cross-examination that they had been tortured prior to making incriminating statements.
Philip Golding, a British national, testified that he had been assaulted and made promises of release if he gave evidence in accordance with the statement he eventually made under duress. He admitted that he had taken messages to ANC contacts in Britain. Herbert Nhlapo said he had attended meetings where they discussed the need for an organisation to take up the grievances of black people.
To the shock of all in the Winnie camp, her friend Mohale Mahanyele was the state’s key witness against the other accused. He said he had allowed Winnie the use of a duplicating machine at the US Information Agency where he worked, so that she could print leaflets urging opposition to the Urban Bantu Council elections and to publicise the ANC. He seemed to have an exceptionally good memory, recounting contact with the accused in the greatest detail, with total recall of exact times and dates. Eselina Klaas had served two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for furthering the aims of the ANC in 1964, and was too scared to admit, even in the safety of the courtroom, that she had been tortured into revealing her role in Winnie’s scheme to aid prisoners at Nylstroom, although all she had done was distribute forms to their families to obtain personal details about them, and had one meeting in Johannesburg with Winnie and Rita Ndzanga about the plan.
Winnie was virtually the only detainee who showed no fear during the court proceedings. When asked to plead, she made a statement, saying that she had been held in detention for seven months in terms of a law she regarded as unjust and immoral, and which had claimed the life of one of her colleagues, Caleb Mayekiso, who had died in detention three weeks after the arrests. When the judge insisted that she enter a plea, she said she found it difficult to do so, as she felt that she had already been found guilty. As the case unfolded, it became clear that the state could prove only that Winnie’s group had arranged relief for the families of political prisoners, and for the prisoners themselves. After twenty witnesses had been called, the case was adjourned.
Winnie had much to think about during the two-month wait: the past, the uncertain future, the terrible months in prison. And the shock of yet another betrayal by someone in whom she had placed her faith. The list was getting longer: Brian Somana, Maude Katzenellenbogen, now Mohale Mahanyele. She had trusted all of them implicitly, and it pained her deeply to admit that they had deliberately set out to destroy her.
Winnie felt sad and hurt rather than angry at their betrayal. She wondered what motivated people to callously exploit their fellow human beings for their own gain. And what did they gain, after all? What were they getting from the security police that made it worth their while to betray her and so many others? These were the people she had believed were her friends, with whom she had shared confidences. Now, she had to wonder how many others who pretended to be her friends were actually spies and traitors. But she wouldn’t do that. The doubts would drive her insane. Without the support of her friends, she knew she would collapse. And the police knew that, too. They were trying to back her into a corner, where she trusted no one and was totally isolated, so that they could finish her off. She would not give them that satisfaction. If people she loved and trusted were going to betray her, and reward her friendship with torture and imprisonment, it would be on their heads. She was not going to change. She could not afford to.
Now categorised as awaiting-trial prisoners, the detainees were finally allowed to receive visitors, and have decent food brought in from outside. Winnie’s first visitor was the faithful Father Leo Rakale. She also received visits from family members, who brought her clean clothes and toiletries, but the intimidation continued. On returning to her cell after consulting with her legal team one day, Winnie found all her clothes strewn on the floor, covered in hand and face cream, and trampled by muddy shoes. She had no way of washing or ironing her clothes.
When the trial resumed, the defence team intended calling Nelson Mandela as a witness – which they were perfectly entitled to do, since he was named in the indictment as a co-conspirator. Whether it was the prospect of having to transport Mandela from Robben Island to Pretoria and the massive publicity this would generate, or the way the media turned their spotlight on the revelations of torture that had been exposed so far, the state case died a sudden death. When the trial resumed on 16 February 1970, the Transvaal Attorney-General announced that he was dropping the case. All the charges were withdrawn and the accused were free to go. Counsel and prisoners alike were stunned.
But, within minutes, they found themselves surrounded by police. The public gallery was cleared, and all the accused were promptly rearrested under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act on the orders of General Hendrik van den Bergh. Instead of going home, they were taken back to prison, and placed in solitary confinement yet again. Nine months after their arrests, they were back where they had started.
The police action caused an outcry, but the government ignored all criticism. The relatives of fifteen detainees applied unsuccessfully for a court order restraining the police from torturing them, and widespread protests were staged. In June, formal charges were brought against the accused again. When the second trial began in October, Winnie was in hospital, running a high fever. The defence team drew the court’s attention to the fact that all but 12 of the 540 charges in the indictment were identical to those withdrawn by the prosecution during the earlier trial, and began laboriously reading out the two indictments, word for word, to illustrate their argument. On the third day, the judge halted proceedings, acquitting the accused again, without a single witness being called. This time, they really were free to go home.
After being cut off from the world for more than 500 days, Winnie’s ordeal was over. She had spent seventeen months behind bars, thirteen of them in solitary confinement, without a shred of proof being produced of her guilt. She walked out of the courtroom in a daze, with a single thought in her mind: she must send telegrams to Nelson on Robben Island and to her children in Swaziland to tell them she was free.
Winnie only discovered years later, in Gordon Winter’s book, Inside BOSS, that he had intercepted her letters, and that the government had been so anxious to convict her that they had considered breaking his cover and bringing him from England to testify against her. However, neither he nor Maude Katzenellenbogen was called as witnesses.
Winnie found adjustment to normal life after the seventeen worst months of her life frightening. It took a considerable length of time for her to accept that she was safe, and that she was not only emotionally but also physically scarred by the experience. Her skin was blotched with the unmistakable signs of vitamin deficiency, and it was a long, slow process to regain her health and self-confidence. She knew that her detractors would make whatever political capital they could out of the fact that she had finally broken under interrogation, but she also remembered that Hilda Bernstein had said of Mandela’s appearance during the Rivonia Trial that people were shocked at how he had deteriorated physically and appalled that the police had managed to r
educe the proud and sophisticated man to a shadow of his former self. Winnie had been exposed to the terrible rigours of being a black political prisoner in apartheid South Africa. She understood so much that had not been clear to her before. She understood why people died in detention and she knew that the stronger one was, the harsher the treatment that would be meted out.
In an interview with the Institute of International Studies at the University of Berkeley, California, and as part of a study titled Conversations with History, the International Red Cross’s medical coordinator for detention-related activities, Hernan Reyes, elucidated prisoners’ reactions to, and assessment of, torture. Asked whether women were more vulnerable and less resilient than men, Reyes said female political prisoners were in many cases the stronger individuals. He recalled seeing how women political prisoners gave prison authorities ‘a very rough time’ with internal rebellion and resistance, despite severe intimidation and force. Women, he said, could be very tough.
Asked what the worst form of torture was, he said that political prisoners who had been severely beaten, tortured with electricity and endured other forms of torture had told him the worst form of torture was being in strict solitary confinement for months on end – six, eight, nine, twelve months.
Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned in harsh conditions and forced to perform years of hard labour, said he had found his own brief encounter with solitary confinement – three days – ‘the most forbidding aspect of prison life’.
Winnie Mandela had been in solitary confinement for thirteen months.
12
Between the ANC and oblivion
IN THEIR EFFORTS to rid themselves of the Mandelas, the security police were not content with Nelson’s incarceration on Robben Island and the concerted campaign of persecution against Winnie. In 1969, while she was in detention, and in the hope of killing the proverbial two birds with one stone, they grabbed an opportunity to get rid of Mandela – permanently.
Success depended on BOSS operative Gordon Winter, and the stage was set for a foolish escape plot hatched by a group of left-wing British sympathisers, who were more idealistic than competent. The plan was initiated by Gordon Bruce, a British left-winger who had become a friend of Mandela, and would be directed by Marianne Borman, a senior employee in the British Information Office.
According to one version of the conspiracy, a senior warder would be bribed to lace the coffee of the two guards on duty outside Mandela’s cell with sedatives, then help South Africa’s most famous prisoner to walk out of jail dressed in a warder’s uniform and carrying a firearm. Bruce would be waiting offshore in a speedboat, and Mandela, after disguising himself in a diver’s wetsuit, would be ferried to the mainland and quickly driven to an airstrip, where famous British aviatrix Sheila Scott would be warming up the engine of a light aircraft, ready to whisk him out of the country.
Bruce advertised in the London Times for a capable organiser who could take care of ‘unusual work’. One of those who responded was Gordon Winter. His credentials as a ‘dissident’ South African were perfect for the task, and provided BOSS with the opportunity to infiltrate the plan without the British participants being any the wiser about Winter’s true identity. While the British conspirators were planning to rescue Mandela, BOSS was intent on orchestrating his death. Winter would arrange that the gun given to Mandela was loaded with blanks, and he would be shot dead as he boarded Scott’s aircraft. The South African authorities would claim every justification for killing Mandela after his armed escape from Robben Island.
Whether or not the plan could ever have succeeded became moot when the British secret service was tipped off by Sir Robert Birley, husband of Winnie’s friend Lady Elinor, after Bruce had confided in him. The plan was aborted, apparently because Scott changed her mind, Marianne Borman became suspicious of Winter, and British intelligence threatened to blow the whistle on everyone to avoid the acute embarrassment the role of British nationals would have caused the government in Whitehall.
Winnie’s banning order had expired while she was in prison, towards the end of 1970, and almost the first thing she did on being released was apply for permission to visit Mandela. She also travelled to the Transkei to see her father for the first time in several years. Both their lives had changed radically in the interim, and they were glad of the chance to heal the rift between them. Columbus was living in a government mansion in Umtata, but Winnie noticed immediately that he had aged visibly, and was not in good health. Columbus was equally concerned about Winnie’s haggard appearance, but it was a happy reunion, nevertheless, and before long they were their old selves with one another.
During the visit, Columbus confessed that he was troubled and had developed grave doubts about the so-called independence of the Transkei. He had seen no benefits for their people, and, if anything, he told Winnie, the poverty, overcrowding and unemployment were worse than ever, with thousands of people having been uprooted from settled lives and jobs in the urban areas, only to be dumped in remote parts of the Transkei where there were no opportunities at all. He told her he had become bitterly disillusioned, and was heartbroken by the fact that the homelands were sustaining the migrant labour system. Columbus poured out his heart to Winnie, and admitted that he had been misled into believing that the homelands would redress the wrongs and injustices visited on black people by the apartheid government. As citizens of non-existent countries, people were deprived of their South African citizenship, and Columbus had belatedly understood that the entire homeland scheme was a ruse to prevent them from claiming political rights outside of their traditional tribal areas.
The pilgrimage to her roots and the reconciliation with her father restored Winnie’s equilibrium. She returned to Soweto invigorated and determined not to be distracted from what she saw as her purpose in life: to keep Mandela’s name alive and focus attention on the liberation struggle. But on reaching home, she realised almost immediately that the authorities had no intention of easing the relentless pressure on her. The house had been raided again in her absence, and while she was picking up the books flung carelessly on the floor, her Xhosa Bible fell open, exposing an expertly hollowed out recess in the pages, in the shape of a gun. She knew this could only be the work of the security police ‘dirty tricks’ squad and that it would serve no purpose to report it, but she did show it to some of her friends. Six years later, when she was banished to the Free State and the police packed up her belongings, the Bible disappeared.
Within days of her return from the Transkei, she was served a double blow: her application to visit Nelson had been turned down, and she was issued with a fresh and more stringent five-year banning order. She sat down and wept. It had been two years since she had seen Nelson, and her newfound resolve all but crumbled. She was forbidden from leaving her house from 6 pm to 6 am, and over weekends. That would be inconvenient, but she could live with it. Not being allowed to see Madiba, however, was almost more than she could bear. In the five years that he had been on Robben Island, Winnie had been arrested more often than she had been permitted to visit her husband in jail.
Many detainees were mentally shattered, some permanently, after months of detention, interrogation and torture, and Winnie’s friends and family were anxious about the effect her terrifying experience might have had on her. But once she had recovered from the physical ravages of her imprisonment, she seemed to be her old self: cheerful, tenacious and more determined than ever to carry the struggle flag. If anything, she seemed stronger and more resilient than before, and those closest to her were in awe of her resolve. Winnie herself said prison had liberated her inner self and purified her soul. She understood why she had been imprisoned. All of South Africa, she said, was a prison for black people, and it was easier to comprehend the regulated suffering of formal incarceration than the endless hardships and injustices imposed on blacks in every aspect of their everyday lives.
Most people had no idea of the conditions under which Winnie and other
activists were detained, since the Prisons Act prevented newspapers from publishing anything about life behind bars. However, when newspapers reported details of her two trials and acquittals, the new banning order that followed her release from prison, and especially the fact that she was refused permission to visit Mandela, there were stringent protests from religious leaders and the political opposition, and for once the authorities heeded the criticism. When Winnie again sought permission to go to Robben Island a month later, the Minister of Justice handled the matter personally, and her request was approved.
It was an emotionally charged meeting for both Winnie and Nelson. She had lost a great deal of weight in prison and still looked drained, and there was almost nothing Mandela could say except to assure her of his love and to remind her, yet again, that their cause was just. Winnie fervently believed that their sacrifice was not in vain, but she desperately needed his nearness and comfort. She couldn’t even hold his hand, and could see him only from the waist up through the glass, the ever-present warders hovering over them, ears pricked for any breach of the conversation rules. In the background was the distinctive whirr of a tape-recorder, capturing their every word.
Winnie Mandela Page 22