‘W Exile in dust
The nine years that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela spent under banning orders in Brandfort were marked by turmoil, frustration, fear, anguish and some memorable friendships
e saw a fence being put up around this house and we wondered who was going to live here,” says Selialimo Makhwe. “Later on that day, we saw a woman driving a Volkswagen and she was black. We had never seen a black woman driving here before. We wondered who she was and we were told, ‘She’s Winnie Mandela’.”
We are looking at an abandoned house in the small, dusty town of Brandfort in the Free State. It is hard to imagine the world leaders and cabinet ministers who once knocked on the door of this now derelict dwelling, while security police kept a note of everyone who came and went.
“I remember when we used to visit her, there were always two policemen sitting on that hill, watching us through binoculars,” says Makhwe.
Makhwe is now chairwoman of the Brandfort Women’s League. In 1977 she was a naïve 21-year-old who had no idea her town was about to become a place of revolutionary awakening. She thinks the reason the security forces banished Madikizela-Mandela to Brandfort — after extended periods of imprisonment, harassment and brutalisation did nothing to break her resolve — was because it was an isolated backwater where not many people knew or cared about what was happening elsewhere in South Africa.
“We were in the dark about what we needed to do to fight for liberation,” says Makhwe.
Madikizela-Mandela changed all that. “After she arrived, people became rebellious,” Makhwe recalls. “We used to have one clothing store and black people were not allowed to use the changing rooms. She went to the shop and asked them how our money was any different from white people’s money, and if it was the same money then why couldn’t we try clothes on before we buy them?
“From that moment, black people in Brandfort shared the fitting room with white people. She changed our mindsets and made us believe we deserved the same treatment as white people.”
More than anything, people in the community recall her as a woman who cared. She contacted Operation Hunger for help in setting up a feeding programme in the township because people were starving.
“She used to give out mealie meal to those who had nothing,” says Makhwe.
“She opened a clinic in her yard and a crèche.”
Dijelwane Mathopa was one of four women who helped Madikizela-Mandela start the crèche, the first one for black children in Brandfort.
“When she came to me and told me she wanted to open a crèche, I was so pleased to be able to help, because the poverty in this town left children abandoned in the streets,” says Mathopa. “She took children from the streets and put them in a place of safety and dignity.”
Madikizela-Mandela arranged training for the four teachers before the crèche opened.
“She made sure we went for training to be taught how to take care of children,” says Mathopa. They took a train to Joburg for the intensive course. Madikizela-Mandela could not accompany them because of the conditions of her exile.
“When we got back we were ready,” says Mathopa. “We took in children from one to six years old. The opening of the crèche turned our children into normal children. Some of those who began their education
We were in the dark about what we needed to do to fight for liberation. After she arrived, people became rebellious Selialimo Makhwe, who was 21 when Winnie arrived in Brandfort
right here are university graduates today.
“We got paid R75 a month. Sometimes we’d go for months without payment but we held on through hard times because we knew we were doing it for the good of our community. The crèche is still here today because of that.”