The agony of Winnie Mandela

Press, 4 August 1977, Page 12

The agony of Winnie Mandela

Since lIILDA BERNSTEIN talked to Winnie Mandela for the “Guardian,” of London, Mrs Mandela has been arrested again. She was charged this week with breaking the banning orders which limit her to Bradfort township, and may not be quoted or give interviews. She was released on bail, and ordered to appear in court at the end of this month.

I last saw Nomzamo Winnie Mandela thirteen years ago as she walked down the step of the Palace of Justice in Pretoria. Her husband, Nelson Mandela and seven others had just been sentenced to life imprisonment. (The ninth defendant, my own husband, had been found not guilty the previous day.)

The crowd outside the court was waiting, as they had waited for the weeks and months of the Rivonia Trial. Winnie raised her arm in salute and called

“Life!” and the people burst out singng and unfurled banners they had been concealing from the police.

We had sat on separate benches in the courtroom for eight months. Our husbands sat together in th? dock, but we were divided, blacks on one side, whites on the other. We had passed, looked but never greeted each other although we were old

friends, for we were both banned, and banned people are prohibited from communicating with each other. Even a smile, a whispered greeting, has been interpreted by the courts as “communication.” We could not risk it under the unremitting gaze of so many police.

Nomzamo Winnie Mandela was born and brought up in rural Pondoland. Her father was Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in Maiser Matanzima’s Transkei Bantustan. “He was a political man.” Winnie said. “I was political in another way.” She matriculated, came to Johannesburg, obtained a social science diploma and became a social worker. In 1958 she married Nelson Mandela, one of South Africa’s first black lawyers, a leading member of the African National Congress (then still legal): and at the time of their marriage, one of the 156 accused in a four-young-long treason trial that ended with the acquittal of all defendants. When the African National Congress was declared an illegal organisation in 1961, Nelson Mandela went underground, from that time, the life of Winnie Mandela

and her two small daughters. Zenani and Zendzi. became one of police raids and unceasing special branch vigilance and harassment. Nelson was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years in jail, but subsequently sentenced again at the Rivonia trial to life imprisonment, and has been imprisoned on Robben Island ever since. When his wife had a permit to visit Robben Island 1600 km (1000 miles) away from home in Soweto, in 1966, she was required to travel by train. But the train was full and she caught a plane to

Cape Towm to see her husband before her permit expired.

For this, she was charged with breaking the exemption to her banning order: twelve months imprisonment, all but four days suspended.

In May, 1969, she was arrested at 2 a.m. and thereafter remained in prison for 491 days, most of it in solitary confinement.

Perhaps because world attention centred on the name of Mandela, or perhaps because the police knew she suffered from a heart condition, she was allowed to remain seated during five days and five nights of continuous interrogation (others arrested at the same time were less fortunate: three died in detention, one became mentally unbalanced). On the third day, when she showed the police her blue and swollen hands and feet. Major Swanepoel said, “For God’s sake, leave us some inheritance when you decide to pop it; you cannot go with all that information.”

In the early hours of the sixth morning Major Swanepoel stopped the

interrogation, and then they continued only day by' day with the prison floor to lie on at night. ‘.‘l used to wake up screaming and found myself talking aloud, and suffered from nightmares.” Yet in February, 1970, the case collapsed and the accused were found not guilty and discharged. They were immediately rearrested, and put back into solitary confinement. (While on trial they had at least been treated as ordinary prisoners.) Six months later, after a second trial on the same charges, they were again found nor guilty.

It was then two years since Winnie had visited Nelson. But she was served with an even more stringent banning order, confining her to a small area of Soweto and keeping her under house arrest every evening and week-

end. The application to leave her home to visit Robben Island was refused. Police came to her home three or four times a day to “check up” and harass her. Another arrest and charge followed in July, 1971: contravening her banning orders by receiving one of her sisters. In September of that year she was again arrested and accused of breaking her banning orders.

This time she had communicated with Peter Magubane. a friend and well-known photographer, in a Johannesburg street. She had spoken to their children who spoke to Magubane. For this infringement she served six months in prison.

In September, 1975, the bans expired and were not immediately renewed. After 13 years of restrictions, harassment. imprisonment, constant

searches of her house, burglary and attempted assault, Nomzamo Winnie Mandela was free for a very short while to move around, to speak openly, to be interviewed.

She spoke bitterly about the untold hardships of the years that had left scars which nothing could remove. She was bitter that while her daughters grew up she could not properly fulfil her role as a mother.

Yet “I am even more opposed to this violent system now than 1 was in 1962. I will express my views. I am aware of the risks I will have to face.” She said she could not be a spectator to the cause of her people. “As long as our people are imprisoned and as long as whites continue to do what they are doing, my life will remain unchanged.” She dismissed

detente as playing for time.

“Is it possible that white are not aware of the agony of the black people? Can they be unaware of how explosive the situation is in South Africa?”

She spoke contemptuously of the Bantustans, declaring South Africa would never accept such a future, only that of a multi-racial South Africa.

Only eight months later, the explosive situation of which she spoke erupted in Soweto, and Winnie Mandela was one of dozens of leading blacks who were arbitrarily arrested and put into “preventative detention” under the Internal Security Act. She was released six months later and once more banned, restricted to her district in Soweto.

In June she was forcibly removed to the place without a name, called

officially the “Brandiort Bantu residential area,” outside the small Free State town of Brandfort. Local blacks have dubbed it Phatakhale, which means “handle with care.” Like the 725 identical houses in the township, Winnie Mandela’s threeroomed house is without electricity, running water, a bath or stove. It has no water-borne sewerage and a door thct locks only from the outside. She is house arrested every night and week-end, but allowed to go into Brandfort during the week.

Her youngest daughter, Zendzi, aged 16, who went with her mother to Phatakahle, spoke with bitterness and anger. The people in Phatakahle speak Sotho and Afrikaans. “We are Xhosaspeaking,” said Zendzi. “We do not speak Afrikaans.” There are no libraries, no cinemas; the location has one primary school, one general store. “The Security Police visit us three or four times a day, they won’t leave us alone.” Every half hour a police van drives through the location streets, sending up clouds of dust. When mother and daugh-

ter went into Brandfort to shop for groceries, they were escorted everywhere by both black and white security police.

Zendzi had visitors at the house where her mother has been dumped. Immediately Winnie Mandela was again arrested and charged, with “receiving guests.” “She can leave the country if she wishes,” said Vorster. She would then, of course, never see her husband again.

The Minister of Justice, Mr Jimmy Kruger, said she would be paid 100 rand (SNZI22) a month. Fifteen rand would go in rent for the house. (She had been earning 350 rand a month in Soweto.) She wbuld get all the basic amenities she would require, said Mr Kruger. “And we are giving her 100 rand for free. What more does she want?”