Winnie Mandela: confined but not cowed

Press, 15 January 1982, Page 12

Winnie Mandela: confined but not cowed

By

ALLISTER SPARKS,

from Brandfort, Orange Free State

Mrs Winnie Mandela, whose banishment to the small town of Brandfort. Orange Free State, was extended for another five years by the South African Government at the end of last year, remains undaunted by her persecution. Mrs Mandela, wife of the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress. Mr Nelson Mandela, was first sent to Brandtort after the Soweto riots five years ago. On December 29.’ the Government extended her banishment, together with an order prohibiting her from meeting more than one person at a time or from being quoted in South Africa, which was first imposed 20 years ago. Although the Government has never been able to secure a major conviction against Mrs Mandela despite its extensive security laws, it has subjected her to a continuous series of restrictions, arrests, detentions and harassments for nearly half her life. She is probably South Africa's most persecuted woman.

Since she married Nelson Mandela in 1958. not a year has passed without her being arrested on some pretext. In those 24 years she and Nelson have been together for fragmented spells totalling only four months; otherwise one or other has been in jail or he was

underground. They were even split up by an arrest before they could reach their own wedding reception, and Winnie still has her wedding cake, uncut, in a box at home. For Winnie the banishment order has been the harshest restriction of all. It cut her off from home, family and friends in Johannesburg and dumped her in a one-horse town 480 kilometres away ih Orange Free State Province, the rural heartland of white Afrikaner conservatism where blacks know their place. She could not even speak the local language. She fears the experience may have permanently scarred her 20-year-old daughier, Zinzi. who stayed with her for a time but is how in Swaziland. Winnie herself is undaunted. She is a tall regal figure, one of Africa's great beauties, at 47 as enduring in her looks as Sophia Loren. She dismissed the renewal of the banishment order with a shrug when I called on her on New Year s Eve: blows like that have been part of her life for so long they have lost their impact. If anything it is the townsfolk of Brandfort w r ho are the more concerned, for life has not been quite the same since Winnie arrived. She has stirred things up. She has pointedly ignored all their separate entrances and segre-

gation signs; she has kept whites wailing while she uses “their" public telephone at the post office: she has marched into the little dress shop and tried on dresses in the only changing room they have. Worst of all she has "spoilt" the local black community. They have grown up accepting subservience and they were wide-eyed seeing this black woman defy the age-old racial conventions and get away with it. Now some whites complain that they. too. are getting "cheeky."'

Brandfort even had a few mini-strikes last year, something unheard of’ in such a community. One was at the bakery and another by the “night-soil removers" (not all the town has water-borne sewerage), who downed buckets for more pay. And the young men are refusing to work for local farmers for 50 cents a day. as they had done for years. “I have spoken' to them." admits Winnie with a smile. “They have been conscientised" — the vogue African nationalist word meaning "politicised." Strangely, there has never been a clash between Winnie and the local whites. They resisted her coming. Protests to the Government included one from the first President of the Republic. Mr C. R. Swart,

who has a farm in the district and regarded her being sent there as a personal affront. But once she arrived they did not confront her. Even when she broke the racial barriers, they kept away and did nothing. "They seemed petrified of me." said Winnie. "There was this Communist come to live in their town. They just didn't know how to handle it. J seem to symbolise some terrible threat to them, to bring out the deep fear the Afrikaner has of his extinction. I never realised how deeply embedded this fear was in the Afrikaner until I came here."

The whites themselves put it a little differently. "Yes. people were unhappy vvhen she came here." says Mr Jurie Erwee. ihe Mayor, who runs a hotel and liquor store, "but we have got used to her. We accept her now. She is clean and wellbehaved. She comes in here to buy things: champagne. Cinzano. stuff like that. Eye spoken to her. and she's well educated."

Mr Piet de Waal, the only lawyer in town, is one of the few whites who has had any kind of relationship with her. Under Law Society rules he was obliged to attend to her legal requirements if asked. He didn't much like the idea and called on the police to assure them he was only doing his duty. But over the five years he and his wife. Adele, have succumbed to Winnie's charm and considerable personality. "We have become quite

friendly." he admitted. "I tell you. I've learnt a few things from knowing her. and I've come to understand her point of view on some matters."

This has led to gossip around town that Piet de Waal is a "kaffirboetie." a nigger-lover. Once when Adeles father, who has a brown Volkswagen like Winnie's visited tor a week with his car parked outside, the story spread that Winnie had moved in with the de Waals. Apart from the de Waals and two other families. Winnie has no social contact in white Brandfort. Her life is devoted to the black community in the "location." out of sight behind a small hill, where she lives in a three-room matchbox house. Number 802. She was appalled bv the malnutrition there, so started a gardening project. Now there are cabbages and beans growing around every matchbox house, and the community's diet has been transformed. There was no clinic, so Winnie started a first-aid and babycare advice service. She is a qualified medical social worker. She has gathered all the "location's" delinquent teen-agers into her care. She visits them regularly, has provided about 30 with books and makes sure each day that they go to school.

The harassment has been constant. Winnie's banishment order restricts her to her house at night and over week-ends, and prohibits her from receiving anyone inside the house

other than her doctor and her lawyer. To enforce this the police at first kept a 24-hour watch from a car parked outside: later they withdrew to the hill and watched through binoculars.

Winnie is a devout member of the Anglican Church, but there is not one in Brandfort. Each week either Father John Rustin or the Bishop of Bloemfontein. the Rt Rev. Frederick Amore, motor 65 kilometres to Brandfort to celebrate Holy Communion with her — in the road outside Number 802. One gain is that this particular clause has been relaxed in the renewed order. For the rest, all Winnie has to look forward to are periodic visits to Nelson on Robben Island, near Cape Town. She is allowed to see him twice- a month for 45 minutes: there is a glass panel between them and they talk through a monitored telephone. Because of the cost of flying - the authorities will not allow her to go by train - she cannot go that often.

"I look forward to the visits so much." she said, “but the trip back is awful. I feel so empty. Look. I'm confident he will come off the island one day. I have no.doubt about that. Bui I can't help thinking of all these years of our lives that are going down the drain

— our best years. Nelson is 63 now and I am like a young girl, still longing for the experience of married life." — Copyright. London Observer Service.