WINNIE MANDELA
be unusual. Proud of their traditional Xhosa
heritage, they also embraced Western
influences. Columbus worked as a head teacher,
while feeding the poor of the village from the land
he farmed. Gertrude wore western dresses which
was totally unheard of at that time. Winnie was
a pretty girl who excelled at school. She was a
rebellious, strong-willed child who often fought
with her seven brothers and sisters. “It was survival
of the fittest,” she later said.
Growing up in a village, she escaped the
discrimination that increasingly affected black South
Africans since the election of the Nationalist Party
in 1948, which supported racial segregation. It was on
a visit to the town of Bizana to buy a school uniform
that Winnie first experienced this: she and her
father were turned away from a white-owned
restaurant. This early injustice in mind, Winnie won
a place at university in Johannesburg to study
social work, then turned down a coveted scholarship
for further study in the US to work with
Johannesburg’s poorest black residents. Visiting tin
shacks with no sanitation, she saw first-hand the
dreadful poverty suffered by so many in the country.
LOVE�AT�FIRST�SIGHT�
Already influenced by her father’s humanitarianism,
Winnie’s political awakening was further enhanced
after Nelson asked mutual friends to introduce them
when she was 21. He was 39 years old and feted by
black South Africans, who he defended in court
against prejudicial white laws. Nelson was confident
he’d met his future wife. Later, fellow political prisoner
Fikile Bam would describe how “deeply in love”
Mandela was with Winnie. Friends spoke of the sexual
chemistry and political energy the great man shared
with his glamorous, spirited young wife.
But theirs was not to be a conventional marriage.
Mandela was already a people’s hero, working for
the African National Congress (ANC), which resisted
oppressive white rule. Conscious that her identity
might be lost by the ‘overpowering personality’ of her
husband, Winnie developed her own voice, her
empathy quickly winning fans among ordinary
people. She focused her own energy on women’s
struggles, marching against the government’s
introduction of pass-books for black women,
to monitor their movements, and on her and
Nelson’s new daughters, Zenani and Zindzi.
As the ANC campaign progressed, Mandela was
forced underground for 17 months by the government.
On his return to South Africa he was captured and
sentenced in 1962 to three years for inciting workers
to strike and two years for leaving the country
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without a passport.
In 1963 he was further
accused of sabotage,
after a police raid
discovered plans
to overthrow the
government by the ANC.
On 12 June 1964,
Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment
and sent to the infamous Robben Island. His young
wife described losing him as, “utter hell... the most
wretchedly painful illness the body and mind could
be subjected to.” Secretly she continued to help the
wives of other political prisoners and distributed
pamphlets for the ANC. “I was ready to deputise for
Nelson,” she said.
NELSON MANDELA’S JOURNEY TO END APARTHEID
◆ When the economic
boom of the Forties brought
thousands of black migrants
to the cities, their presence
fuelled fear among the
white population. The
election of the National
Party in 1948 brought an
end to this ‘mixing’. New
apartheid laws grouped
South Africans into ‘black’
NELSON AND WINNIE MARRIED
IN 1958. FRIENDS TALKED OF
THEIR SEXUAL CHEMISTRY
‘white’, ‘coloured’ and
‘Indian’; black residents
were forcibly removed from
their land and relocated.
◆ The Bantu Education
system was introduced by
the National Party in 1953
to slow the progression
of the black population.
It segregated black
“The viciousness of
her treatment left
Winnie hardened”
students and directed
the teaching syllabus
away from subjects such
as English and maths that
would give poor children
the chance to go on and
have profitable careers,
and instead concentrated
on African languages,
farming, woodwork and
domestic service.
Observing her powerful new role, the South
African government began a campaign of sustained
harassment. They searched her house and took her
in for questioning so many times that Winnie kept a
suitcase by the door. Banning orders were imposed
that stopped her visiting Nelson in prison for years
at a time, leaving them both bereft. A warder
described Winnie’s reaction to seeing Nelson for the
first time after two years as, “with a pride as fierce as
any lioness, with tears rolling down her cheeks.” For
his part, Nelson would dust her photo every day
and write, “I even touch your nose with mine to
recapture the electric current that used to flush
through my blood whenever I did so.”
THE�FIGHT�AGAINST�APARTHEID�
On 12 May 1969 police arrived at dawn and arrested
Winnie on charges of reviving the ANC and
communicating instructions to them from Nelson.
“[The children] were grabbing at my skirts screaming
‘Mummy, don’t leave us!’,” she said. She spent months
enduring appalling conditions in a tiny cell, with
blankets that stank of urine and
an unwashed toilet bucket.
“Winnie wavered between sanity
and insanity,” lawyer Joel Carlson later
wrote. She was acquitted in December
1969 but was immediately re-arrested
under the Terrorism Act, which
allowed the government to keep her
without charge indefinitely. After
a total of 17 months in jail, 13 of which
were in solitary confinement, Winnie
was released without being
prosecuted. But the damage had
already been done and so began
the transition of Winnie from young humanitarian
to angry and broken woman. She emerged sick,
weakened and brutalised but determined to continue
her struggle against apartheid. If the police had
hoped to silence Winnie, they failed. The viciousness
of her treatment left her hardened. “I knew at that
point I would not hesitate to use violence to attain
my ideals,” she declared.
As their attempt to silence Winnie failed, the
government exiled her in 1977 to the desolate rural
town of Brandfort. To her horror, she was placed in
a house with a mud floor and a pit latrine. For water,
she had to queue with 80 other households for one
tap and carry it home in buckets.
Winnie’s response was to rebel. When she
discovered that black residents could not enter
white shops in Brandfort but were instead forced
to queue at a hatch, she walked through the front
THE MANDELAS’
DAUGHTERS ZENANI,
49 (LEFT) AND ZINDZI, 50
◆ Born in 1918, Nelson
Mandela had already studied
at university when Bantu
was introduced, and become
involved in student politics.
Following the 1948 election,
he began to protest and
campaign for change. As
a lawyer he defended poor,
black South Africans who
broke the apartheid laws,
as well as leading
the ANC’s Defiance
Campaign. Mandela
believed in non-violent
protest but when that failed,
he took charge of the ANC’s
armed wing, Spear of the
Nation and orchestrated
a campaign of bombing
against unmanned
government targets.
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