South Africa’s Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Be at Peace #Winnie! Winii Maandeellaa eenyuudha? April 5, 2018
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, South Afruca's Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Winnie Mandela
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‘I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.’
‘The years of imprisonment hardened me…. Perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions wouldn’t be blunted as they have been in my case. When it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life, I no longer have the emotion of fear.there is no longer anything I can fear. There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn’t any pain I haven’t known.’
Winii Maandeellaa eenyuudha?
Winii Maandeellaa haadha warraa Nelsan Maandeellaa duraaniifi fakkeenya qabsooftotaa kan taatee boqachuunshee dhagahameera. Waa’ee eenyummaashee baruuf viidiyoo kana BBC Afaan Oromoo irraa as tuqaa dowwadhaa.
Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela was born, the fifth of nine children, in the village of Mbongweni, Bizana, in the Transkei on 26 September 1936. During her infant years her father, Columbus, was a local history teacher. In later years he was the minister of the Transkei Governments’ Forestry and Agriculture Department during Kaizer Matanzima’s rule. Her mother, Nomathamsanqa Mzaidume (Gertrude), was a science teacher.[i]
Her parents desperately wished Winnie had been born a boy and growing up, Winnie took pains to fulfil the role of tomboy by playing with the other boys in her peer group, practising stick fighting and setting traps for animals. [ii] Once, while quarrelling with her younger sister, Princess, Winnie fashioned a knuckleduster out of a nail and a baking powder tin and accidentally struck her sister across the face while aiming for her arm. It was one of many instances for which her mother administered a hefty beating.[iii]
Portrait of a young Winnie Image source
Early Experiences of Apartheid
In 1945, when she was only nine years old, Winnie had her first conscious experience of what the strictures and injustices of racism and apartheid meant in South Africa. News had just arrived in Bizana that the Second World War had ended, and celebrations had been scheduled. Along with her siblings, Winnie begged their father to attend, and eventually he acquiesced to their demand. However, upon arriving at the town hall, it was discovered that these celebrations were “for whites only” and the children were forced to remain outside with their father while the white population enjoyed the merriment within.[iv] The obvious injustice struck a deep blow for Winnie, and thereafter she grew increasingly sensitised to the inequality of the world around her.
This incident was followed by another, equally formative one. In Bizana, there was a large Black population, but all shops and services were owned by Whites. One day, Winnie recalls seeing a scene in a shop with her father, whereby a Black man was squatting on his haunches and breaking off pieces off bread to feed to his wife while she breastfed their baby. All of a sudden a White youth – the son of the shop owners, came charging towards them and yelling that he wouldn’t have kaffirs making a mess in his store. He kicked at them and their food and forced them out of the shop. Winnie watched the scene dumbstruck. She could not understand how this man could allow himself to be treated thusly, or why her father, who was such a staunch moralist, would not intervene where his morality so obviously demanded that he should. In time she came to understand that her father’s involvement would likely only have made the situation worse, and moreover, that a byproduct of Apartheid was that from an early age Black children became accustomed to seeing their parents humiliated without any attempt to protest in defence of themselves.[v]
Luckily for Winnie, Bantu education – the hated Apartheid policy of introducing separate education syllabi for Whites and Blacks – was only introduced in the early 1950s. Therefore she was able to benefit from an education that was on par with her White peers at the time. She passed her junior certificate (Standard 8) with distinction and then went on to study at Shawsbury, a Methodist mission school at Qumbu. It was there that she matriculated and distinguished herself as a person with exceptional leadership qualities. It was also there, under the tutelage of teachers who were all Fort Hare graduates, that she began to become more politicised. Due to financial constraints, Winnie’s sister, Nancy, to whom Winnie was close, dropped out of school and worked casual jobs to ensure that Winnie’s education could continue.[vi]
In 1953, upon her father’s advice, Winnie was admitted to the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work in Johannesburg, where Nelson Mandela(who was already gaining national renown), was the patron.[vii] It was the first time she left the Transkei and a formative moment in her life. It was in Johannesburg that she saw the full effects of Apartheid on a daily basis, but also where she discovered her love of fashion, dancing and the city. It was only after a few months of living in Johannesburg that Winnie first went to Soweto.
Until 1957, Winnie had been fairly romantically uninvolved. However, in that year she met with Barney Sampson, a “gallant, fun-loving man”[viii] of whom Winnie eventually grew tired due to his apoliticism and submissive attitube to white domination. Soon afterwards, Winnie was also courted by the future chief of the Transkei, and her father’s future boss, Kaiser Matanzima, whom happened to visit Baragwanath hospital as a disitinguised visitor that year. It was a relationship that was never to be, however, because she was soon to fall in love with Matanzima’s childhood acquaintance and relative, Nelson Mandela.
In October 1958, Winnie took part in a mass action which mobilised women to protest against the Apartheid government’s infamous pass laws. This protest in Johannesburg followed a similar action that had taken palce in Pretoria in August 1956.[ix] The Johannesburg protest was organised by the president of the ANC Women’s League, Lilian Ngoyi and Albertina Sisulu, amongst others. In fact, Winnie travelled with Albertina from Phefeni station in Orlando to the city centre where the protest was taking place. During the protest, the police arrested 1000 women.
Winnie had a few influential presences in her life: chief amongst them were Lillian Ngoyi, who, along with Helen Joseph, were the only two women accused in the Treason Trial; Albertina Sisulu; Florence Matomela; Frances Baard; Kate Molale; Ruth Mompati; Hilda Bernstein(who was the first Communist Party member to serve on the Johannesburg Council in the 1940s); and Ruth First. These were people who Winnie was able to consider not only as sources of inspiration, but as trusted confidantes. This is significant, because as Winnie’s struggle against government continued, her inner circle became consistantly infiltrated by people who would gain her trust as allies, only to reveal themselves later as spies.[x] As Nelson spent increasing amounts of time in police custody or underground, the number of unsettling relationships Winnie established with people who would turn out to be police informants also seemed to increase. As Bezdrob has written about Johannesburg at the time, it was “a cesspool of informers” and unfortunately for Winnie, she appeared to be surrounded by spies.[xi]
Winnie on the cover of Drum magazine, October 24th, 1965 Image source
Bantu Authorities and Rift with Colombus
Conflict occurred in the family when the Apartheid government introduced the Bantu Authorities Act in 1951. Kaizer Matanzima, her former suitor, had sided with the government and fought the opposition to the government’s transparently divide-and-rule policy. A body of Pondo elders, referred to as Intaba, opposed the Bantu Authorities and waged a resistance that swept Winnie’s family up into the turmoil. One night during a raid on her family home (specifically targeting her father, Colombus, due to his reluctance to donate his buses to their cause) Intaba rebels entered his house and badly assaulted his wife before burning down the hut where they lived. Winnie’s stepmother survived the attack, but was paralysed from the waist down and died soon after. Despite this event, Colombus sided unequivically with Kaizer Matanzima and was subsequently rewarded with a cabinet position in the Transkei homeland looking after agriculture. This was a huge betrayal for Winnie as it was tantamount to siding with the Apartheid government. Winnie’s other relatives joined the resistance, thus her family was cleft in two.[xii]
Winnie’s married life to Nelson while he was in hiding was unusual, to say the least. She would meet him clandestinely in highly covert places; often with Nelson in thick disguise. This was the ‘Black Pimpernel’ phase of Nelson’s life, and Winnie had little choice but to fit in around his clandestine activities.[xiii] Their most intimate and prolonged encounters occurred at the Lilliesleaf farm in Rivonia.
‘Inside Boss,’ the expose written in 1981 by former BOSS spy, Gordon Winter, just one of many people Winnie put her trust in, only to be badly betrayed. Image sourceAt the end of May 1963, Mandela was transferred without warning to Robben Island. Ironically, once absorbed into the prison system proper, Mandela, who was so fluent in the laws and strictures of the country, found himself much less vulnerable to abuse than Winnie found herself on the outside.[xiv] Whereas prison for all its despicable features was governed by clear rules and structures, outside of prison Winnie found herself at the mercy of unpredictable and chaotic forces, which she was ill-equipped to navigate. In June of that year she was first permitted to visit her husband in jail. She travelled 1400 kilometres from Johannesburg to Cape Town for the purpose, before a 10 kilometre journey over choppy seas to Robben Island. Once there the couple were allowed to meet for just 30 minutes, separated by dual wire mesh, no seats, and a security detail in easy listening distance. They were not permitted to speak to one another in Xhosa; only English or Afrikaans.
With her husband in jail, the authorities increased the pressure to make Winnie’s life as difficult as possible, with her children Zenani and Zindziswa particularly targeted. On numerous occasions Winnie enrolled them into schools, only for the security police to find out and insist that the schools have them expelled.[xv] This was in addition to the continued raids on her house; her banning order and frequent last minute refusals to visit her husband in jail.
A flavour of the harassment and trauma of a typical raid is summed up by Winnie herself:
“…that midnight knock when all about you is quiet. It means those blinding torches shone simultaneously through every window of your house before the door is kicked open. It means the exclusive right the security branch have to read each and every letter in the house. It means paging through each and every book on your shelves, lifting carpets, looking under beds, lifting sleeping children from mattresses and looking under the sheets. It means tasting your sugar, your mealie meal and every spice on your kitchen shelf. Unpacking all your clothing and going through each pocket. Ultimately it means your seizure at dawn, dragged away from little children screaming and clinging to your skirt, imploring the white man dragging Mummy away to leave her alone.”[xvi]
Winnie Mandela standing in front of her home in Orlando West, September 1970, the day of The Terrorist Act Trial. Nineteen of those accused of terrorism were acquitted, by Mr. Justice Viljoen. Image sourceIn 1965, a new and more severe banning order was handed to Winnie. Previously her banning order had limited her movements from ‘dusk to dawn’ but her new banning order barred her from moving anywhere other than her neighbourhood of Orlando West. This had several ramifications, including the necessity for her to give up her job as a social worker. Subsequently, she was hounded out of job after job with the police approaching anyone bold enough to give her employment be it a dry cleaning temp or a clerkship, and insist that by some mechanism they fire her.[xvii] Due to her continued struggles and that of finding her daughters a school, Winnie eventually sent them away to Swazilandand with the help of Lady Birley (wife of Sir Robert Birley, an ex-headmaster of Eton College) and Helen Joseph, she was able to enrol them at Waterford Kamhlaba private school.
Winnie was kept in solitary confinement for seventeen months. For the first 200 days, she had no formal contact with another human being at all aside from her interrogators, amongst whom was a certain Major Theunis Jacobus Swanepoel; a notorious torturer.[xviii]The only items in her concrete cell were three thin bug-infested and urine-stained blankets, a plastic water bottle, a mug and a sanitary bucket without a handle. The only other feature of her confines was a bare electric light bulb, which burned constantly and robbed her of any sense of night or day.
Winnie’s first banning order expired while she was in jail. However, almost immediately upon being released she was served with another, lasting five years. This, more stringent restriction forbade her from leaving the house between 6pm and 6am and made it virtually impossible to see her husband on Robben Island. Before the second banning order took effect, however, Winnie travelled to the Transkei to see her father. Since their last meeting, Colombus had both aged visibly and become disillusioned with the state of the so-called ‘independent’ homeland.[ix]It had become clear to him that the homeland system was little more than a ruse to prevent Black South Africans from claiming full political rights in the country.
Up until the 1970s, the years of constant police harassment, jail time and intimidation had done absolutely nothing to quash Winnie’s revolutionary spirit; indeed, her conviction had only become stronger. Her message to the authorities was clear: “you cannot intimidate people like me anymore.”[xx]
Soweto Uprising and another Banning Order
Brandfort lies around 400 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg and 50 kilometres north of Bloemfontein. Prior to her arrival in Phathakahle, the township there, the Department of Bantu Affairs had informed locals that a dangerous female – indeed, a terrorist – would be moving there and that they should avoid contact with her at all costs.[xxi]
Geographical location of Brandfort: the site of Winnie’s eight year banishment Image source
States of Emergency and Mandela United Football Club
When Winnie returned to Johannesburg, the place she had come to identify as home, in 1986, she found it was a changed and more dangerous place than the one she had left behind. In 1985 Oliver Tambo, from his position in exile, had made a call to all South Africans to “make the country ungovernable” and people had heeded his call in droves.[xxii] The youth were running riot and the government’s imposition of a series of states of emergency had done nothing to quell the resistance.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Chris Hani and Tokyo Sexwale present at a rally in South Africa Image source
Winnie Mandela, wearing her khaki slacks, helps bereaved comrades carry the coffin of an apartheid victim. PETER MAGUBANE Image sourceOn April 13 in Munsieville, Winnie gave a speech that would become immediately infamous. Addressing a crowd of listeners, she declared that “together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.”[xxiii] This speech that appeared to overtly endorse the practice of necklacing was highly inflammatory and the media outcry against her was profound. However, in light of her enormous sacrifices to the cause, the ANC’s response was muted at best – this, despite the fact that behind closed doors there were murmurs amongst the organisation’s top brass that Winnie had become a liability.[xxiv]
As events in South Africa began to reach fever pitch in the late 1980s, with international calls for Nelson’s release resulting in massive pressure on the Apartheid government, life on the ground was more precarious and dangerous than ever. Despite the government making grand concessions by releasing top ANC members such as Govan Mbeki at the end of 1987; in the townships, murder, disorder and civil unrest were the order of the day. Furthermore, in Soweto the MUFC were quickly gaining a reputation for operating with impunity as a kind of vigilante mafia under the tutelage of their coach, Jerry Richardson, who later revealed himself to have been a police informer during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).[xxv][xxvi]
Joyce Mananki Seipei and Jerry Richardson, Johannesburg, 1997 Image source
On 28 July 1998, the MUFC became embroiled in a conflict with pupils from Daliwonga High School and as a consequence, Winnie and Nelson’s beloved house in Orlando West was set on fire and burnt to the ground. Winnie relocated to a bigger property – some would say a mansion – in Diepkloof and the MUFC moved with her.[xxvii] Shortly after the move, grim stories emerged about kidnappings, assaults and torture at the hands of the MUFC. One of the stories of kidnapping involved a youth whose name was to become synonymous with Winnie’s in years to come: Stompie Seipei.
During the TRC it transpired that Stompie, along with three other missing boys, Gabriel Mekgwe, Thabiso Mono and Kenneth Kgase, was in the company of MUFC members prior to his disappearance and murder.[xxviii] Stompie’s body was discovered on the outskirts of Soweto on January 4.[xxix][xxx] Evidently, he had undergone a severe beating prior to his murder and Winnie’s old friend, Dr Abu-Baker Asvat had seen him for the injuries he sustained. Dr Asvat reported that Stompie was vomiting and could not eat and declared that he had suffered permanent brain-damage. On January 7, one of the other boys who had been with Stompie at Winnie’s home in Soweto, Kenneth Kgase, escaped and contacted Father Paul Verryn, a Christian priest whom Winnie alleged was guilty of abusing children in his care. Verryn took Kgase to a doctor and then to his friend Geoff Budlender, a lawyer, where Kgase described abductions and assaults perpetrated by MUFC.
James “Stompie” Seipei, the 14 year old child who was brutally kidnapped and murdered by the Mandela United Football Club, with Winnie herself directly implicatedImage source
Walter Sisulu, Nelson, Winnie, Albertina Sisulu and the Mandela family Image source
Each one a titan to the liberation struggle, Winnie and Nelson’s life after his release was a blur of travel, speeches and media obligations.[xxxi] Despite certain members of the ANC having grown increasingly frustrated with Winnie’s militancy and candour, Nelson elected to appoint her to the ANC’s head of Social Welfare in September. The decision was a controversial one but given her good relationship with the country’s youth (and de facto future voters), it was ultimately accepted by the dissenting voices within the party.
“In the worldwind of events following Mandela’s release from prison and the start of negotiations designed to ensure a peaceful transition rather than a bloodbath in South Africa…no one bothered to find out what Winnie needed and wanted, how her life had changed or what her aspirations might be… From the moment she was implicated in the serious crimes involving the football club, it was as though her entire past had been erased from the public mind.”[xxxii]
On September 6 1992, The Sunday Times got hold of a letter Winnie had written to Mpofu making mention of, amongst other things, ANC welfare department cheques that had been cashed for him.[xxxiii] It was virtually the death knell for any aspiration Winnie may still have had for a career in politics and on September 10 Winnie resigned all her positions in the ANC.
By the time the TRC was established in February 1996, Winnie had enough accusations made against her to warrant an appearance at an in camera hearing of the Human Rights Violations Committee. Winnie appeared before the TRC in 1997, which judged her to have been implicated in a number of assaults and murders carried out by the MUFC. At the end of Winnie’s own testimony, the chaiman of the committee, Archbishop Desmond Tutu implored her to admit that whatever her intentions might have been in Soweto in the late 1980s, that “things went wrong.” Winnie responded that indeed “things went horribly wrong” and she apologised to the families of Stompie Seipei and Dr Abu-Baker Asvat.[xxxiv]
In her personal affairs, the media reported numerous financial irregularities involving Winnie’s name, including a R1 million scandal also involving the ANC Women’s League.[xxxv]
On June 16 2001, offering Winnie some respite from the media’s disclosure of her unusual financial activities, an incident was captured on television of an extraordinary encounter with Mbeki onstage at a Youth Day rally at Orlando Stadium. Winnie arrived an hour late to the event, and despite interrupting a speech by the chairman of the National Youth Commission, received a huge outpouring of support when the crowd saw her stepping out of her car. Mbeki was already onstage and visibly unamused by the interruption. On the way to her seat on the platform, Winnie stopped behind Mbeki’s chair and bent down to greet him with a kiss. Mbeki snapped and pushed Winnie away, knocking her baseball cap off her head in the process, only for Home Affairs minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi to retreive it and place it gently back on Winnie’s head.[xxxvi]
In 2010 an English newspaper, The Evening Standard, published an interview with Winnie by Nadira Naipul that claimed to accurately quote her talking disparagingly about her relationship to her husband, Desmond Tutu and the TRC.[xxxvii] Naipul insists that the controversial interview took place, but Winnie vehemntly denies this.[xxxviii] The truth of the matter remains unknown.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela remains an enigmatic figure in South African society and history. It has been speculated that like so many South Africans traumatised by the brutality of life under Apartheid, Winnie may have long suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and her actions ought to be understood in light of this. [xxxix] Despite her occasionally “morally ambiguous” behaviour, Winnie is someone whose commitment to justice and the downtrodden has seldom been in doubt, though her means of achieving her goals have drawn justifiable scrutiny.[xl]
with Julius Malema and Cyril Ramaphosa at her 80th birthday celebrations at the Mount Nelson Hotel on 13th September 2016 Image source[ii] Bezdrob, Anne Marie du Preez (2003) Winnie Mandela: a Life. Cape Town: Zebra Press. ↵
[xxxvi] ‘Mbeki brushes off Winnie.’ News 24 Archives ↵
[xxxviii] Naipul, Nadira (July 16 2010). ‘The Immortal Truth about Mandela: interview with Winnie by Nadira Naipul. http://mayihlomenews.co.za/ ↵
• Daley, Suzanne (1997). ‘Winnie Mandela’s Ex-Bodyguard Tells of Killings She Ordered.’ The New York Times. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/04/world/winnie-mandela-s-ex-bodyguard-tells-of-killings-she-ordered.html (last accessed 20 January 2017)
• Naipul, Nadira (March 8th 2010). ‘How Nelson Mandela betrayed us, says ex-wife Winnie.’ The Evening Standard. Available at http://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-ex-wife-winnie-6734116.html (last accessed 28 January 2017).
• Naipul, Nadira (July 16th 2010). ‘The Immortal Truth about Mandela: interview with Winnie by Nadira Naipul.’ Available at http://mayihlomenews.co.za/ http://mayihlomenews.co.za/the-immortal-truth-about-mandela-interview-with-winnie-by-nadira-naipaul/#more-1931 (last accessed 24 January 2017).
• Ndebele, Njabulo (2016) ‘Contemplating the intricacies of Winnie Mandela.’ The Mail and Guardian. Available at http://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-29-contemplating-winnie-mandela (last accessed 28 January 2017).
• News 24 Archives ‘Mbeki brushes off Winnie.’ Available at http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Mbeki-brushes-off-Winnie-20010616(last accessed January 25 2017).
• South African Women Protest Pass Laws. See http://www.africanfeministforum.com/south-african-women-protest-pass-laws/ (last accessed 23 January 2017)
• Winnie: Soweto’s most famous lady’ published on joburg.org.za. See http://joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5036&Itemid=188 (last accessed 23 January 2017)
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