491 Days
Page 1
491 Days
This series brings the best African writing to an international audience. These groundbreaking novels, memoirs, and other literary works showcase the most talented writers of the African continent. The series also features works of significant historical and literary value translated into English for the first time. Moderately priced, the books chosen for the series are well crafted, original, and ideally suited for African studies classes, world literature classes, or any reader looking for compelling voices of diverse African perspectives.
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491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323 /69
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
ISBN: 978-0-8214-2102-4 (hardcover)
978-0-8214-2101-7 (paperback)
491 Days
Prisoner Number 1323/69
WINNIE MADIKIZELA-MANDELA
Foreword by Ahmed Kathrada
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
ohioswallow.com
© 2013 by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
The Author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work.
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First published in 2013 by Picador Africa
an imprint of Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag X19, Northlands
Johannesburg, 2116
Front cover photograph (taken on the day of Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela’s release on 14 September 1970) from Bailey’s African History Archive/Africa Media Online
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mandela, Winnie, author.
491 days : prisoner number 1323/69 / Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ; Foreword by Ahmed Kathrada.
pages cm. — (Modern African writing)
ISBN 978-0-8214-2102-4 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-2101-7 (pb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4492-4 (pdf)
1. Mandela, Winnie. 2. Mandela, Winnie—Imprisonment. 3. Anti-apartheid movements—South Africa. 4. Government, Resistance to—South Africa. 5. Women political activists—South Africa—Biography. 6. Politicians’ spouses—South Africa—Biography. 7. South Africa—Biography. 8. Mandela, Winnie—Correspondence. 9. Mandela, Nelson, 1918–2013—Correspondence. I. Kathrada, A. M. (Ahmad M.), writer of added commentary. II. Title. III. Title: Four hundred ninety-one days. IV. Series: Modern African writing.
DT1949.M36A3 2014
968.062—dc23
2013049174
To little Zenani Mandela,
my great granddaughter
who lost her life on 11 June 2010
I struggled like her mother and the family at large to deal with the pain of her loss. I felt faith flagging as I introspectively questioned God, asking secretly how much pain can any one human being endure.
I was consoled by a quotation on the cover of a book my eldest daughter Princess Zenani, Her Excellency, Her Royal Highness, Ambassador to Argentina gave me. Max Depree wrote of how we are led ‘through the darkness of loss and pain and into the light of grace’.
Grasping at the straws of my faith, I know that God will provide justice and closure to this unbearable grief.
‘I had to wait for 2 weeks before I could send you my warmest congratulations for serving 491, and still emerge the lively girl you are, and in high spirits. To you and your determined friends I say welcome back! Were I at home when you returned I should have stolen a white goat from a rich man, slaughtered it and given you ivanya ne ntloya to down it. Only in this way can a beggar like myself fete and honour his heroes.’
— NELSON MANDELA IN A LETTER TO HIS WIFE WRITTEN ON
1 OCTOBER 1970 SHORTLY AFTER HER RELEASE
‘In a way during the past two years I felt so close to you. It was the first time we were together in similar surroundings for that length of time. Eating what you were eating and sleeping on what you sleep on gave me that psychological satisfaction of being with you.’
— WINNIE MANDELA IN A LETTER TO HER HUSBAND WRITTEN ON
26 OCTOBER 1970 SHORTLY AFTER HER RELEASE
Contents
Foreword by Ahmed Kathrada
Introduction
Part One Journal
Chapter 1 Arrest
Chapter 2 Detention
Chapter 3 Acquittal and Re-detention
Chapter 4 State of Mind
Chapter 5 The Decision
Chapter 6 Health
Chapter 7 Interrogation
Chapter 8 Interrogation and Other Issues
Chapter 9 Attitude of the Interrogators
Chapter 10 May Diary
Chapter 11 June Diary
Chapter 12 July Diary
Chapter 13 My Husband
Chapter 14 New Trial
Part Two Letters
Background
Epilogue by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Twenty Years in the Life of Winnie Mandela
Sixteen Months in the Life of Winnie Mandela: 12 May 1969 to 14 September 1970
Acknowledgements
As the South African security system sought to destroy all opposition after Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, his wife Nomzamo Winnie Mandela experienced almost constant harassment. Her longest and most tortuous period of police detention lasted sixteen months, from 12 May 1969 to 14 September 1970. This little-known period is documented in a recently recovered prison journal she kept secretly and details the trauma this young mother of two small children endured. Her words and those in letters by her and Nelson Mandela reproduced here highlight both the effect of apartheid’s brutality and the strength of a defiant spirit.
Foreword
Ahmed Kathrada
I met Mrs Winnie Mandela in about 1957 or 1958 – a little before she and Madiba were married. Not long after her marriage, and five months’ pregnant, she had her first taste of detention. At the threshold of what should have been a happy, healthy and peaceful married life, little did the mother-to-be, or Madiba, foresee that this was going to be the beginning of her increasingly turbulent and full-time way of life.
In 1959, their first daughter, Zenani, was born. And during 1960, their second daug
hter, Zindziswa, was born.
For over two years after their marriage, Madiba was still involved in the marathon Treason Trial in Pretoria. He was among the last 30 accused in the case that started in 1956. He had to travel daily to Pretoria, which meant he was obliged to leave home when the girls were not quite awake, and often return home when they were about to go to bed.
Following the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, a state of emergency was declared, during which Madiba and his fellow Treason Trialists were detained for five months, and the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress were banned. Oliver Tambo was sent into exile, and the law firm of Mandela & Tambo closed down. This negatively affected Madiba’s income, which in turn impacted on the household.
Soon after the acquittal of him and 29 other Treason Trialists on 29 March 1961, Madiba went underground, and lived the life of an outlaw. He could not live at home with his family while he was in the country, and nine months later he left on a clandestine trip abroad. He only returned in July 1962 and was arrested soon thereafter.
All the above happenings meant that from the time they were married in 1958 and had their first child in 1959, Winnie’s life was virtually that of a single parent. From 1959 to 1961, Zenani and Zindzi lived with an occasional father. From Madiba’s arrest on 5 August 1962, until his release on 11 February 1990, for 27 years Zenani and Zindzi and their brothers and sister from Madiba’s first marriage grew up with an absent father.
It is a privilege to be invited to write a foreword to this book. Like Winnie, I too know something about bannings and detentions. Although there are basic similarities in detentions, there are also unique features about each.
Winnie has been arrested, detained or faced trials about a dozen times. She has been banned, placed under house arrest, and worst of all, banished to the little rural town of Brandfort in the Free State. Over a period of thirteen years, she was free of banning orders for only ten months. In one instance, despite suffering from a heart condition, she was interrogated by the security police continuously without a break for days and nights!
This was when she was detained in May 1969 under the Terrorism Act and charged with 21 others. Two of the detainees, Shanti Naidoo and Nondwe Mankahla, refused to give evidence against Winnie, and were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. Another detainee, Caleb Mayekiso, was tortured to death. Caleb and I were fellow accused in the Treason Trial. I knew, respected and admired him, and mourned his death when I got news of it on Robben Island.
Because of her commitment, loyalty, courage, determination and resilience, Winnie emerged from this long spell in detention unshaken and proud, with her head held high.
Something can be written about every one of Winnie’s detentions.
However, this book is about one of her highly risky, dramatic, unique and perhaps unprecedented initiatives.
During her detention, Winnie managed to keep a secret journal of her experiences. She handed it over to her lawyers, and practically forgot about it. Forty-one years later, in 2011, Greta Soggot turned up at Winnie’s office in parliament and presented the original journal to her.
While Winnie was going through unimaginable harassment at the hands of the police, she remained constant in her thoughts about her beloved husband on far-away Robben Island. Likewise, Madiba’s days and nights were no less filled with concern and anxiety about Winnie. I personally witnessed his pain at her detention and saw his countless representations to the authorities. And he was equally worried about his children.
Here are extracts written by both Madiba to Winnie and vice versa. In one of his letters from Robben Island he wrote:
Since the dawn of history, mankind has honoured and respected brave and honest people, men and women like you darling – an ordinary girl who hails from a country village . . . My sense of devotion to you precludes me from saying more in public than I have already done in this note . . . One day we will have the privacy which will enable us to share the tender thoughts which we have kept buried in our hearts.
In another letter, he wrote:
Our short lives together, my love, have always been full of expectation . . . In these hectic and violent years I have grown to love you more than I ever did before.
In a letter to Winnie after he was convicted and sentenced to five years in 1962:
One of my precious possessions here is the first letter you wrote to me . . . I have read it over and over again and the sentiments it expresses are as golden and fresh now as the day I received it.
I never cease to be amazed that 23 years after my release the interest in our prison experience continues unabated. One of the questions most frequently asked is: ‘How did you manage to keep up your spirit and morale?’ My response is simple, but true.
The 26 years on Robben Island and in Pollsmoor Prison were difficult.
The thirteen years of hard labour with picks and shovels for eight hours a day were not easy. The unchanging everyday monotony of the same food; the cold showers for about ten years; sleeping on two mats on the ground for fourteen years; the first period with two letters and two visits a year; the absence of children. In my case, for the first time I saw a child at close quarters, and actually touched and held her was after twenty years! There were no newspapers for sixteen years.
I must emphasise, prison is no bed of roses. Yes, with all the deprivations and trauma, those were undoubtedly difficult years. What then kept up our morale?
There were a number of factors. It may not be easy to believe. In our case, uppermost in our undiminished thoughts and reminders were: Yes, we were suffering. But after taking every hardship and every deprivation into account, it could not be disputed that we were protected! No policeman could barge onto Robben Island or into Pollsmoor Prison and start shooting. This was not the case with our comrades outside prison. They were at the very coalface of the struggle. They had no protection. Comrades such as Winnie Mandela; the 600 unarmed, defenceless schoolchildren who were slaughtered in the Soweto uprising of 1976; the leaders and members of the United Democratic Front and the Congress of South African Students. Individually and collectively, in the face of adversity and danger, they kept the flag flying.
Their sacrifices, courage and concern must never be forgotten.
Introduction
Forty-one years after she was released from sixteen months in detention, Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela MP received a surprise visitor at her office in South Africa’s parliament. It was Greta Soggot, the widow of David Soggot, one of her advocates. She had come from England armed with a stack of papers that turned out to be a journal and notes Mrs Madikizela-Mandela had written while she was in detention between 12 May 1969 and 14 September 1970.
She and scores of others had been detained under the repressive Terrorism Act, which had been passed just two years earlier. It placed them beyond the reach of the courts and under the total control of the security police.
The delivery of the documents to Mrs Madikizela-Mandela brought vivid and horrific memories rushing back to the then 75-year-old woman of the traumatic time when, as a young wife and mother of two small children, she was left alone when her husband Nelson Mandela was jailed for life for sabotage. She had decided to join with others to continue the struggle for freedom in South Africa, and she paid the price.
She and her comrades were interrogated by the notorious security police’s Sabotage Squad, which included Theunis Jacobus ‘Rooi Rus’ Swanepoel, whose reputation for brutality grew during this period and beyond.
After almost six months in detention, Mrs Mandela and her 21 co-accused appeared in court charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. The state claimed that among other charges they attempted to revive the banned African National Congress (ANC) and to commit sabotage by inspecting trains and railway installations as potential targets. They were not charged with a single act of violence.
Of the expected 80 state witnesses only twenty were ultimately called to testify. Many of them had been held for
months in solitary confinement and were tortured, including Shanti Naidoo and Nondwe Mankahla who refused to testify against Mrs Mandela.
In what became known as the ‘Trial of the 22’ or more officially the ‘State vs Ndou and others’, the defence raised the issue of torture under interrogation. Four months later, the charges were dropped and they were free to go. But their exit from the court was thwarted by security police who simply re-detained them. About a year after her detention had begun, Mrs Mandela started writing a journal, recording the still-fresh memories of her incarceration and subsequent trial. In July 1970, all but three of the accused were recharged with similar offences, but this time under the Terrorism Act. They were joined by an Umkhonto we Sizwe operative, Benjamin Ramotse, who had nothing to do with them.1 In June 1970, he became accused number one in the new trial of the ‘State vs Benjamin Ramotse and 19 others.’
On 14 September 1970, the nineteen accused were acquitted. Mr Ramotse stood trial alone and eventually was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Mrs Mandela and some of the other accused attended his sentencing to give him moral support.
Her journal written on loose pages is published here, not strictly in chronological order, along with letters between her and Nelson Mandela, then in Robben Island Prison, and other correspondence about her plight.
1. He was one of the members of Umkhonto we Sizwe who launched the armed wing of the ANC on 16 December 1961. His comrade Petrus Molefe was killed when their device exploded in Soweto. Mr Ramotse was injured and captured. After being charged, he jumped bail and left South Africa to undergo military training. He was kidnapped by Rhodesian security forces in Botswana and brought back to South Africa.
Part One
Journal
Chapter 1
Arrest