Zeni and Zindzi came home from boarding school to find that their mother had been detained – again. When they visited her, Winnie was struck by the irony that this was the same prison in which she had come close to a miscarriage when she was pregnant with Zeni in 1958. Almost two decades later, she was in the same place, still pursuing the same ideals, and South Africa was no closer to becoming a normal society than it had been when Winnie and 2 000 other women were jailed for opposing the pass laws. In fact, Winnie felt that in some respects, black people were actually worse off than they had been in the 1950s.
In December, after five months in jail and without any charges being brought against her, she was released. Dr Motlana was also freed, and one of their first tasks was to set up a committee of prominent residents to take control of Soweto. Motlana was elected chairman of the Committee of Ten, which stepped into the gap left by the discredited UBC and would become the most influential body in the township.
The security police increased their surveillance of Winnie, and after knowing freedom of movement, speech and association for more than a year, she was served with a new five-year banning order in January 1977. She continued to work at Frank & Hirsch by day, and, to fill the long hours between 6 pm and 6 am, enrolled with the University of South Africa for a degree in social work by correspondence course. In a sense she was back in solitary confinement, and her life was becoming increasingly difficult.
By contrast, Mandela’s hardship was abating. It was almost as though the authorities had decided to focus their efforts on Winnie, knowing it would be punishment enough for Mandela to be aware of her suffering but impotent to do anything about it. He had entered a pensive stage of his life, conscious that the years were slipping by, and started contemplating old age. In December 1976 he had written to Winnie that he was not used to seeing his skin loose and sagging as if he were sixty-two (he was in fact fifty-eight), but as she well knew, he joked, he was really only forty-five, and once he could resume his regular exercise programme no one would challenge his ‘youth’. The letter was written in lighter vein, but between the lines there was a sad and earnest attempt to assure Winnie that he was still worthy of her love. Their relationship occupied much of his reflection at this time.
Shortly after arriving on Robben Island, Mandela had requested permission to start a garden in the courtyard. For years this was not allowed, but finally the prison authorities agreed, and he and the other prisoners were allowed to plant their garden. For most of them this was little more than a hobby, a way to while away the hours, but Madiba threw himself into gardening heart and soul. Every spare moment was spent working there, or reading and studying ways to improve the ‘crops’. For Mandela, the tiny patch represented far more than the growth of plants. He saw it as a parable for the country’s people, so sorely in need of nurture and care. He wrote to Winnie about a particularly beautiful tomato plant he had tended from a tiny seedling to a magnificent plant, producing healthy fruit. But when it began to wither, nothing he did could restore it to its former strength, and when it finally died he dug up the roots, washed them and buried them in a corner of the garden, thinking of ‘the life that might have been’. He hoped that Winnie would read between the lines and understand his longing to nurture the people who mattered in his life, and know how he feared that lack of care – his inability through circumstance to cultivate the single most important relationship – would see their marriage share the fate of the tomato plant.
Winnie understood all of it, and as a mother, still grieving for the many children who had died in and since the Soweto uprising, she could extend the allegory to South Africa’s young black people, whose parents gave them life and looked after them, only to see them mowed down on the streets.
That letter marked an important point in the lives of both Nelson and Winnie. As he seemed to be moving into the autumn of his political career, she was about to enter the summer of her own. Despite fifteen years of being banned, Winnie was more popular than ever, and her power was about to bloom. The future of black South Africa and the continuation of the struggle had never been more important to her, and the government realised with alarm that none of the measures they had previously applied had done anything to diminish her influence. Having tried to clip her wings and failed, but still determined to isolate and silence her, the authorities devised a new form of punishment for Winnie.
They exiled her to the heartland of Afrikaner patriotism and segregationist fervour.
14
Banished to Brandfort
AS SHE HAD DONE for months, Winnie spent the night of Sunday 15 May 1977 studying until well after midnight for her degree. Zindzi, now seventeen, was home for the school holidays, but had gone to bed early.
At four o’clock in the morning, Winnie was woken by a clamour far worse than the customary banging on the front door that announced a police raid. Being arrested in the middle of the night was nothing new, but since Winnie had no intention of disappearing without trace, as had happened to so many other people in the hands of the security police, she always tried to alert someone when it happened. That night, she telephoned Horst Kleinschmidt’s wife, Ilona.
After dressing and giving Zindzi a few quick instructions, Winnie picked up the suitcase next to the front door, but the police told her to leave it, that she wouldn’t need it.
As she stepped outside into the bright lights trained on her house, she noticed that there were several trucks and a number of policemen in camouflage uniforms. Winnie was driven to the Protea Police Station in Soweto where, like everything else about this particular raid, the procedure differed from previous experiences.
She was neither charged with any offence nor directed to a cell. The officers on duty kept making snide remarks about what awaited her, but none approached her, and she was left to sit on a hard bench in the charge office for the rest of the night. She was shivering, both from the cold and her anxiety over what lay in store, worrying about Zindzi, who had yet again witnessed her mother being dragged off to prison. But, as always, Winnie hid her concerns behind a poker face.
When daylight came, Zindzi was escorted into the police station, carrying the house keys. Only then did the station commander, Colonel Jan Visser, present Winnie with a document authorising her banishment to Brandfort in the Free State – on the direct instructions of the Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger. She had been neither accused nor convicted of a crime, but as in the case of detention without trial, would have no legal recourse against the order.
Winnie had no idea what was going on. At first, she thought she was to be imprisoned in the Free State, but the police kept saying she was being banished. Then she remembered the trucks parked outside her house, and slowly it dawned on her that she was being sent into exile, forcibly removed, lock, stock and barrel. In her own country.
It had happened to other political figures, including Chief Luthuli, but they had usually been confined to their so-called homelands. Winnie had never even heard of Brandfort, and had no idea where it was. Her mind racing, she tried to ignore the shock and fear clutching at the pit of her stomach, the uncertainty of what came next, mentally running through what she had to do before she left, who to call, what instructions to give. She had no idea that she would not be allowed to pack her things, take leave of her family and close friends, nor even be able to lock her own front door one last time.
Visser told Winnie that the minister had allocated an amount of R100 a month for her expenses, from which rental for a house in Brandfort would be deducted. Coldly, she told him that they could keep their money, that she had nothing left but her pride, and nothing on earth would persuade her to accept a penny from her oppressors.
She and Zindzi were ushered to one of the military trucks outside, piled high with Winnie’s possessions, bundled into the back of one with some heavily armed men, and driven away from the police station.
On the way to Brandfort, Zindzi told Winnie how the police had moved through the house, carried th
e furniture outside, haphazardly emptied cupboards and wardrobes, and tied the contents up in sheets and blankets pulled from the beds. By the time the journey ended, most of Winnie’s crockery was in pieces.
When the house stood empty, Zindzi said, a policeman asked if she wanted to stay there, or go with Winnie. She chose to go with her mother.
Winnie realised Zindzi had not grasped the magnitude of the sacrifice she was making, and that her teenage daughter had acted instinctively out of support for her. Her mind was in turmoil and she was filled with dread as she watched the city disappear behind them. How long would she be away? Would she ever be allowed to return to her beloved Soweto? It was so much more than just a township to her. She loved the people, their indomitable humour and spontaneity, the courage and community spirit that lit up their drab, often hopeless lives. She had worked among them, she relished the bustle of the crowds. What was it like where she was being taken? She felt as though she had been pushed over the edge of a cliff and could do nothing except wait and see where she would land, and whether she would survive.
As the trucks trundled on, the landscape did nothing to improve her frame of mind. The flat, pale veld was empty except for the occasional farmhouse nestled in a clump of trees at the side of the road. There were no signs of life anywhere. Winnie tried her best to ignore the nagging despair, reminding herself that this was exactly what the government wanted, and if she succumbed they would emerge victorious – not only over her, but over Madiba, the ANC and all the black people of South Africa. She could not give in. She had to scrape the barrel and find enough courage to live through this enormous challenge – alone, without the support of friends, family or political comrades, with only Zindzi for comfort.
The short, bespectacled cabinet minister who had wagged a finger at Winnie at the Durban airport and cautioned her about her conduct had shown that, in 1977, he approved of her behaviour even less than he had two years before. Sending Winnie to the Free State, the most racist of the four provinces, was a far harsher step than the forced relocation of two million black South Africans who had been driven from their homes to the apartheid government’s Bantustans. At least those victims usually had some tribal or traditional connection to the places they were going, and in many cases they had family as support when they arrived. She and Zindzi would be alone in a place that was as alien as a foreign country, which, of course, was just what the government intended. Neither mother nor daughter could speak or understand the local language. Blacks in the Free State spoke Sotho or Tswana and some Afrikaans, whereas Winnie’s mother tongue was Xhosa, and she spoke fluent English, but no Afrikaans. The authorities had clearly calculated that the language barrier would make it impossible for her to communicate with any of her new neighbours, and thus influence them politically.
In almost twenty years of dealing with Winnie Mandela, the South African government and the security police had learned nothing about her.
It was a four-hour drive to Brandfort, which lies some 400 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg and 50 kilometres north of Bloemfontein, the Free State capital. The town was a shock – a drab and dusty rural hamlet with unimaginative houses, an old-fashioned two-storey hotel, small shops lining the main street and a pervading atmosphere of lethargy and inactivity. Winnie and Zindzi were taken to the police station and formally handed over to the Free State security police. She was tired, and asked where she could refresh herself. She and Zindzi were taken to the hotel, but, since they were ‘non-white’, they were not allowed to use the facilities, which were strictly reserved for whites only. They were shown to the laundry – a ramshackle outbuilding – instead. From there, they were accompanied to the township superintendent’s office to register Winnie as a new resident.
The forlorn township had no official name, but the black residents had baptised it Phatakahle, meaning ‘handle with care’. Winnie’s heart sank as she took in the desolation that was almost palpable. When the police stopped in front of what was to be her home, she had to fight back the tears. It was one half of a tiny, semi-detached square house with a flat roof. There was no fence, and not a sprig of green. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but the beige Free State dust. Winnie’s little box was No. 802, an address that would become as well known as No. 8115 in Soweto. A gang of prisoners was moving a mound of earth from the interior – and Winnie reeled as one shock followed another. The only entrance was a narrow door that opened directly into the kitchen, and there were just two other rooms, neither of them big enough in which to swing the proverbial cat.
The toilet, a pit latrine, was in the backyard. There was no running water, electricity or water-borne sewage system. And worse, there were no floors. The bare earth outside merely extended into the house.
Winnie and Zindzi watched, numb and speechless, as their furniture and belongings were offloaded. When the prisoners tried to move the furniture inside, they discovered that the kitchen door was not wide enough. Despite themselves, Winnie and Zindzi started to giggle as they watched the efforts to squeeze the furniture through the door, turning it from side to side and upside down. But no matter how hard the men tried, they could not move a single piece of Winnie’s good and solid furniture into the house – not the lounge suite, dining table, refrigerator, stove or even the beds. They finally gave up, and the police loaded everything but the bundles of bedding back onto the trucks, and carted it off to the police station, where it was stored for the next year. Winnie’s refrigerator was plugged in at the police station so that she could make use of it, though it meant she had to walk there each time she needed something.
The first night in Brandfort was a harrowing end to a day of trauma and distress. There was one communal tap serving about eighty township houses, and Winnie and Zindzi had to queue with a long line of strangely uncommunicative residents to fetch water. During the previous week, the residents of Phatakahle had been informed by the Bantu Authority that a woman – a dangerous terrorist – would be moving there, and they were warned to avoid her at all cost. True to form, they did as they had been told, hence the fact that Winnie found them curt and aloof. Having had a proper bathroom and running water in Soweto, she didn’t even have a basin in which to wash, and there was no way to heat any water. She and Zindzi bought potato chips for supper, but they were too tired to eat, and huddled together on bundles of clothing and linen dumped on the dirt floor in an empty house. It took a long time before Winnie slept that night.
Early the next morning, she and Zindzi were awakened by voices from the adjoining half of the semi-detached house. In the light, Winnie saw that the dividing wall stopped well short of the ceiling, with the result that one could hear perfectly well what was going on in the house next door. As soon as she was dressed, Winnie walked to the police station and insisted that the gap be closed. She was told her neighbour was a security policeman assigned to watch her, but she made it clear that even if his orders were to monitor her every word and move, she had no interest in his. Her neighbour on the other side was also a security policeman, but at least he lived in a separate house.
Winnie realised that for the time being, at least, she was stranded in the godforsaken town, and had to find a way of letting her family and friends know what had happened, but there was not a single telephone in the entire township. Fortunately, thanks to Ilona Kleinschmidt, the press soon learned that she had been whisked off to Brandfort, and reporters and photographers raced to the Free State to get the story.
After assessing the situation, Winnie decided she would have to make the best of her dilemma, redirect her bitterness into action, and turn the blow the authorities had dealt her into a challenge. She and Zindzi walked to the town to buy some basic provisions, blissfully unprepared for the caustic small-town racism they had not encountered in Johannesburg. At the first shop, they were told blacks were not allowed inside, but had to queue at a side window for service. Winnie pointedly ignored the rule and walked into the shop, straight past the flabbergasted atten
dant. Other blacks who watched her stride into the store, and expected to see her thrown out, were amazed when instead all the whites who had been in the shop walked out, outraged by Winnie’s audacity. In the face of her imperious conduct, and totally intimidated by the presence of journalists, the shop assistant meekly served her. Suddenly, Brandfort had a celebrity, albeit a ‘dangerous terrorist’. While the authorities had taken the precaution of alerting the black community to Winnie’s arrival, white residents had been told nothing, probably because the police assumed they did not need to be cautioned against associating with her. The mayor arrived and said although he had not been given prior notice, Winnie was welcome in the town. The deputy mayor remarked, prophetically, that she had put their small town on the map.
Winnie descended on Brandfort like a thundering tidal wave, assaulting racial prejudice, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, bigotry and injustice with her usual unhesitating boldness. The police had the dividing wall in her house built up to the ceiling and provided her with a small coal stove to replace her electric one, which could not fit through the door. Trudging to the police station whenever she needed something from the refrigerator was inconvenient, but she decided to live with it for the time being. The authorities in Brandfort had never encountered any black person daring enough to make demands, and Winnie was convinced they had given in to her requests more out of surprise than a desire to be helpful.
The next obstacle was the black community. Winnie knew instinctively that the police were behind their unsociable behaviour, and decided not to force the issue. She understood that the police had thought the language barrier would isolate her from the local residents, and she made it a priority to learn their languages so that she could first communicate with them, and then convince them to do something about their servile existence. After years of watching her every move, intercepting her letters and telephone calls, brutal interrogation and more than a year of solitary confinement, the security police had still not fathomed the depth of Winnie’s courage, her strength of character and will, her determination and extraordinary tenacity. They clearly did not understand that her spirit was far from broken, and that she would confront every obstacle they put in her way. If they did recognise her strength, they apparently believed that exile in Brandfort would cower her and force her to admit defeat.
Winnie Mandela Page 26