Winnie Mandela

by Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob

  To Winnie’s joy her employer, Helmut Hirsch, forwarded her salary for May, even though she had worked for only half the month and had not given notice. With the money, Winnie bought two single beds, narrow enough to fit through the kitchen door, and paraffin lamps to replace the candles she had used since her arrival. Slowly her spirit was lifting, and she was preparing for battle.

  Within days, Winnie was receiving visitors who came from all over the country. Whites were not allowed to enter black townships without permits, but despite this, many of her friends – and a large number of people she hadn’t known before – travelled vast distances to see her, bringing food and other gifts. She was deeply touched that people she had never heard of would go to such lengths to show their support.

  Among her first visitors was Ilona Kleinschmidt, who came all the way from Johannesburg. She was shocked at the conditions in which Winnie was expected to live, and when she returned home she contacted various other friends and spread the word of Winnie’s predicament. Another early visitor was Bunty Biggs, who made the trip from Pietermaritzburg in Natal with food for Winnie and Zindzi. The steady stream of visitors gave Winnie new heart.

  Over the years, friends had helped and supported her in different ways. Ray Carter, a devout Christian she had met through Helen Joseph, had called her every night while she was in Johannesburg, and they prayed together on the telephone. Winnie, knowing her telephone was tapped, told Ray it didn’t matter who was listening, the prayers could only help them. With no telephone in Brandfort, she and Ray could not maintain this ritual, but they agreed to pray for each other every night at the same time. In a letter to Ray, Winnie said she would always regard her as an angel, sent by God to sustain her spiritually while she was in Brandfort.

  When she ventured out into her new neighbourhood, Winnie was appalled. As a social worker, she had dealt with abject poverty in Soweto and in the Transkei, but there was a depth of impoverishment and hopelessness in Phatakahle that she had never seen before. There were 725 houses in the township, all similar to hers, and the total population was 5 000. Winnie discovered that there was a high rate of infant mortality as a result of malnutrition, and a disturbing level of alcohol abuse. Phatakahle was a sad, desolate place. The government had exiled Winnie to Brandfort to destroy her very spirit, but, ironically, far from being crestfallen, she had a liberating influence on Phatakahle’s residents. Her professional training and caring heart allowed her to devise plans to help the destitute blacks and infuse them with hope and inspiration. She firmly resolved to prove to the authorities that she would continue to work for her people, and serve them wherever she was.

  Winnie’s presence turned the sleepy hollow of Brandfort upside down. Following her early victory over where she could shop, a sprinkling of other blacks nervously followed suit, and when they were not thrown out, as had previously been the case, a steady trickle stopped queuing at the serving hatches and shopped inside. A prohibition that had been in place for years without question, died a quiet death, but white residents were bitterly unhappy at this turn of events. When Winnie or other blacks entered the shops, white customers promptly left. Winnie was not beyond exploiting the situation, and when this happened she took her time, browsing and looking over the merchandise for as long as she liked, while the irate whites fumed outside. In newspaper interviews they attacked the government’s decision to place Winnie in their midst, and demanded that she be moved elsewhere. They said that she was rude, resorted to outbursts and temper tantrums if they tried to put her in her place, and was corrupting black residents and giving them dangerous ideas. The government knew that wherever they sent Winnie, the reaction would be the same, so she stayed.

  Even complaints by the former minister of justice and state president, Blackie Swart (in Afrikaans the word ‘swart’ means black), had no effect. He owned a farm in the district and insisted on being accompanied by an armed guard when he visited Brandfort, in case he was confronted by the dangerous terrorist. This provoked ironic smiles among even the town’s staunchest Afrikaner residents. Swart was one of a handful of non-executive state presidents appointed over a period of less than two decades after South Africa became a republic. His successor, Dr Nico Diederichs, was a former minister of finance, whose tenure as state president was plagued by rumours that he had hoarded millions – plundered from South African taxpayers – in secret Swiss bank accounts. The last office bearer before the post was abolished was former prime minister BJ Vorster, who was forced to resign in disgrace when he was implicated in the infamous Information Scandal amid more rumours of millions being spirited out of the country and allegedly stashed in Paraguay.

  The black population of Phatakahle had expected Winnie to retreat into docile servility like the rest of them, especially after the briefing they had received from the Bantu Authority officials, and the way she had been dumped on them by the police. They were astonished at the impact she made on the town within weeks. For the first time in their lives, they saw a black person with the temerity to interact with whites as an equal – even to argue with them. It was all the more astonishing that she got away with it. In no time, wherever Winnie and Zindzi went, they were followed by curious onlookers, who watched and learned. Blacks in Brandfort had always had to buy clothes without first trying them on, and could not return purchases if they were the wrong size. Winnie’s growing entourage was astonished when she insisted on trying on a dress in a well-known fashion chain store. The shop assistant refused, and a furious argument erupted. Winnie refused to budge, the assistant called the police, and the altercation turned to farce.

  The police called the Security Branch in Bloemfontein, thus suggesting that Winnie’s desire to try on a dress posed a threat to state security. A large group of onlookers formed outside the shop, but the assistant stuck to her guns, and Winnie never did try on that particular dress. For the first time, however, the rigid petty apartheid policy backfired on the white community. Blacks boycotted the store for months – something that had never happened before – and white residents complained even more loudly about the effect of Winnie’s presence on ‘their’ blacks. Left with no choice, shop owners eventually capitulated, and black clients were allowed to try on clothes before buying.

  Winnie persisted in her efforts to learn Sotho and Tswana. She began by exchanging a few words with children walking past her house, and progressed to brief conversations with their mothers. Before long, she was talking to her neighbours with ease, and as township residents came to realise that she was not the dangerous criminal they had been warned against, more and more women stopped to speak to her.

  Winnie had her work cut out for her. Black mothers could not afford milk for their infants, and fed them a thin porridge of flour and water instead. Many died of malnutrition. Each weekend, Winnie said, was marked by ‘another pathetic walk to the cemetery’ for a township baby’s funeral. But it was not just the children who were malnourished. A decent meal three times a day was a mere dream for most of Phatakahle’s residents. Blacks working in Brandfort, and women employed as domestic servants by whites, earned meagre wages. The women were usually given a midday meal of maize porridge with gravy, or sometimes just a dab of dripping. Many of the women did not eat the unsubstantial meal, but took it home to share with their families at night.

  It enraged Winnie that, while there was no clinic for blacks, no doctor or social assistance, the township authority had built a municipal beerhall, where already destitute blacks spent their money on alcohol. At the end of the month, over weekends, even on the day that pensions were paid, the Brandfort prison was filled to capacity with people locked up for drunkenness and public disturbance. This severely irked Winnie, and she set in motion projects that would help uplift the downtrodden community.

  Her own life, meanwhile, remained mired in practical problems. One of the worst hardships was the absence of running water, a crucial component of her strict regimen of personal hygiene. Without even a sink or washbasin in the h
ouse, when Winnie wanted to take a bath, she had to join other residents in the laborious walk to the single tap in the street, collect several buckets of water, one at a time, and heat it on the coal stove before pouring it into a zinc tub on the bedroom floor. She was grateful that as a girl she had learned the art of carrying a pail of water on her head, which made the chore less tortuous, but the fact that she had to fetch her own water led to a constant battle with the police. Forbidden by her banning order from leaving her house after 6 pm, Winnie simply ignored the restriction, and went to fetch water in the evening. The police threatened her with action, but she paid no attention. If she needed water, she said, which she did every night, she would fetch it. With her bucket on her head, she strode past them defiantly.

  The security police kept her under constant surveillance and the raids on her home continued, just as they had in Soweto, sometimes several times a day. Sergeant Gert Prinsloo had been drafted from Bloemfontein to watch Winnie during the day, her two neighbours being deemed sufficient of a ‘night watch’ after dark when she was confined to her house and forbidden to have visitors. Initially, Prinsloo stood outside her house all day long, backed up by a police van that patrolled the dusty road at fifteen-minute intervals. When Winnie’s lawyer complained, Prinsloo took up position on a hill opposite her house, from where he scanned the premises through binoculars. The authorities never relaxed their vigil, day or night, seven days a week. Zindzi complained that the police never left her mother alone. Letters to and from Winnie simply disappeared. The delegate-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross for Africa, Jacques Moreillon, discovered that a malicious prison warder was censoring Winnie and Mandela’s letters to one another, intentionally distorting their words. Winnie’s only means of talking to her family and friends was the public telephone at the Brandfort post office. She arranged with people to call her there at 11 am and 4 pm, and twice a day, every day, she walked the considerable distance to the post office and waited for a call. Often, none came, and she returned home dejected and disappointed.

  Soon after being taken from Orlando West, Winnie learned from friends in Johannesburg that a security policeman and his family had moved into house No. 8115 – the home she and Nelson had shared. She was livid. The Johannesburg municipality had leased the house to Nelson for as long as he lived, and as far as Winnie was concerned, no one had the right to occupy it without his permission. She instructed her lawyer to evict the illegal occupants, but it took a year before this was finally accomplished, at which point the police removed all Winnie’s furniture from storage and returned it to Orlando West.

  As always, anyone who befriended or supported Winnie became a target of the relentless security police campaign to isolate and harass her. A neighbour, Albertina Dyas, learned early on that the most innocent encounter with Brandfort’s ‘terrorist’ could have frightening consequences.

  While passing the Dyas home, Winnie had stopped to ask Albertina where she might buy coal for her stove. As they chatted, a third person joined them, offering a chicken for sale. Sergeant Prinsloo immediately decided this constituted an illegal gathering, and swooped down on the trio. He questioned a terrified Mrs Dyas harshly, demanding to know what they had been talking about. Winnie was charged with violating her banning order, and when she appeared in court, the prosecutor asked why she was dressed in the colours of the banned ANC. Drawing herself up to her full height, she replied haughtily that although she had almost no rights in South Africa, she was still entitled to choose her wardrobe.

  When some of Zindzi’s friends came to visit, Winnie was charged with contravening her banning order, found guilty and given a six-month suspended sentence. Disregarding an earlier court ruling that if a second person was staying in her house it could not be assumed that visitors had come to see Winnie, the magistrate declared that she should not be allowed to circumvent her banning order by claiming that callers were Zindzi’s guests.

  Winnie never pleaded for mitigation of any offence, regardless of how petty, unfair or untrue the charges. The ANC’s philosophy was that to do so would undermine morale, since anyone accused of political crimes was innocent, having been indicted by a system that was inherently immoral and unjust. She knew from experience that the only hope of a reprieve lay with the higher courts on appeal, and that it was virtually impossible to win any case heard by a magistrate. The only time she had been acquitted by a lower court was when she assaulted Sergeant Fourie, who accosted her in her bedroom. Winnie was struck by the irony: that she was consistently found guilty of things she had not done, yet declared innocent of the one act that afforded her deep satisfaction, namely punching a policeman.

  It hardly seemed possible, but the police harassment was even more intrusive in Brandfort than it had been in Soweto. With only Winnie to watch, Prinsloo was zealous in the extreme, searching her house at all hours for forbidden visitors who might be hiding under beds or in cupboards. Because whites were not allowed in the township, they had to meet Winnie on ‘their’ side of the road that separated the town from Phatakahle. When Helen Joseph and Barbara Waite visited on Winnie’s birthday with a cake and other gifts, Prinsloo suddenly jumped out of the bushes at the road’s edge, a caricature with a ‘camouflage’ crown of leaves and twigs around his head. All three women were placed under arrest, and when Joseph and Waite refused to testify against Winnie in the ensuing court case, they were sent to prison – Joseph, aged seventy-two, for two weeks and Waite for two months.

  The same fate befell Ilona Kleinschmidt and Jackie Bosman, who received sentences of three and four months respectively. As soon as they were released, they went back to Brandfort. Winnie’s friends knew that the police were trying both to scare them away and find any excuse for arresting her, but they showed their mettle by continuing to visit and refusing to provide any information that might be used to exacerbate her hardship.

  In September, Mandela, upset that Zindzi was being intimidated by the police, brought an urgent application for an interdict against Prinsloo and Sergeant Ramathlwane, Winnie’s neighbour, to stop them harassing his daughter. Zindzi and her friends had been threatened by the police, and some claimed they had been arrested and assaulted. At least one teenager had been asked by the security police to act as an informer. The judge ordered that Zindzi was to be allowed to receive visitors in peace, and that in future the police would have to supply evidence to support allegations of illegal visits to Winnie.

  That same month, still reeling from the upheaval of being banished, Winnie received news that her friend Steve Biko had died in detention. While in solitary confinement, Biko was so severely beaten and tortured that he sustained a brain injury before his captors threw him – shackled and naked – into the back of a police van and drove him from the Eastern Cape to Pretoria. He died there twenty-four days after being arrested in Grahamstown under the Terrorism Act on 19 August. Paying tribute to Biko, Winnie said: ‘You felt your blood rise as you stood up, and felt proud being black, and that is what Steve did to me.’

  Though many of the black residents still treated Winnie with caution, some bypassing her house in order to avoid the experience suffered by Albertina Dyas, the attitude towards her changed perceptibly after a single incident of goodwill. When a child cut her foot on a broken bottle in the street in front of Winnie’s house one day, she rushed out, carried the little girl inside, and cleaned and bandaged the wound. But many hurdles remained. In terms of her banning order, Winnie was not allowed to enter any educational institution, and since she was not permitted to be in the company of other people, she could go to church only if she made special application to do so. She refused to do this, saying she would seek no man’s permission to worship God, and denouncing the authorities for appropriating the power to decide whether or not she could.

  But she took spiritual support from the visits of Archdeacon John Rushton, who travelled to Brandfort from Bloemfontein every fortnight for six years to conduct a solo communion service for Winnie.
Only once did she make an exception, seeking permission from the authorities to attend the christening of her grandchildren in Bloemfontein Cathedral by Rushton and the Dean of Bloemfontein, Aidan Cross. The security police attended the ceremony as well, to ensure that Winnie did not talk to Helen Joseph, who was godmother to two of the children and, at the age of eighty, was as feisty as ever in her condemnation of apartheid.

  In terms of her banning order, Winnie was confined to her house for twelve hours every night, and to the magisterial district of Brandfort by day. With scant chance of finding a job in Brandfort, she was condemned to live on the charity of others – a painful situation for a woman who had worked since completing her studies in social work, had a bright future in her profession, and had supported herself and her family. But while her situation forced Winnie to accept material help, she resolved not to surrender her fierce pride. She was endlessly grateful to Helmut Hirsch, who continued to pay her R250 a month for the first year of exile in Brandfort. The money covered certain basic necessities and day-to-day living expenses for Winnie and Zindzi.

  With donations from her many sympathisers, she gradually bought items of furniture that could fit through the narrow door of her house, which slowly became more habitable, though Winnie continued to regard it as a prison and refused to pay rent or service charges. Discomfort became a way of life, and in the absence of her furniture, Winnie resorted to storing dry food in one of her cupboards at the police station. When she opened the cupboard one day, she found that rats had gnawed their way into a month’s supply of groceries, damaging not only the cupboard but other furniture as well, and even some of Madiba’s law books.