Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Winnie’s high-risk mission
Went to rescue comrade
JOEL Martins stepped into the room to find an AK47 aimed at his head.
But the man holding the assault rifle in that small house in Dube village, Soweto, wasn’t there to shoot Martins.
He was a friend who Martins knew only as Sipho, who had been sent on a rescue mission by the Old Lady, the name used for Winnie Mandela.
In fact, Martins would later learn that the Mother of the Nation was the brains behind this rescue mission, and was waiting in a Kombi close by.
The street was swarming with undercover cops, who were staking out the house.
But Winnie had insisted on going on the operation even though it was highly likely a shootout between Umkhonto we Sizwe members and state security police would take place.
This was a time when many in the Struggle saw Winnie Mandela as the face and figurehead of the war against apartheid. But on this day in July 1988, Martins was to see another side of the Old Lady, who was willing to put her life on the line for a fellow ANC member, all the while risking an international incident.
Sipho motioned with the AK47 for Martins to step aside just as the undercover security branch officer walked in.
“I told Sipho that he mustn’t shoot,” recalls Martins. Up until that moment Martins had been preparing himself for either a long prison term on Robben Island or, more likely, death. He had been arrested on June 25, 1988, and it didn’t take long for the security police to realise they had a member of the ANC’s special operations unit. While being tortured and shuttled between police stations, Martins worked out a plan to minimise the fallout of his capture. He decided he would give up Jabulani Khumalo, a courier who passed on messages between operatives in South Africa and the ANC in Botswana.
“I knew that Jabu wasn’t involved in anything they might send him to Robben Island or the gallows for,” says Martins, who believed this plan would give other MK guerrillas enough time to evade the police. It was during one interrogation that Martins got a lucky break. He was handed a pen and paper and was able to write a quick message: “Rachet has been caught. Johnson, who is in the security, has also been caught. Both are still undergoing interrogation. Behave normally when they are made to phone Botswana. I’ve been in detention since 88-06-25-Lele.”
He then tucked the message into the hem of his jersey.
On July 23 Martins, accompanied by an undercover police officer, visited Jabu’s home in Dube village.
Jabu wasn’t there, but Martins was able to slip the note to his wife, Monica Mbuli.
The next day they returned to the house, hoping to find Jabu; instead they found Sipho hiding behind the door with an AK47.
“I told Sipho that the place was crawling with cops,” says Martins. Sipho tucked the AK47 into a large paper bag and he, the cop, and Martins stepped out of the house.
There, close by, recalls Martins, was a Kombi, with “University of Witwatersrand, SRC” branded across its side.
The biggest surprise was when the Kombi door opened, and there was Winnie in tears.
“I said to myself ‘what the f***k is this guy doing’. I said to Sipho, ‘why is the Old Lady on this mission?”
“She insisted on coming,” replied Sipho.
All Winnie wanted to do was hug Martins, still with tears in her eyes. The Kombi sped off and the police gave chase, but soon lost them in the traffic.
Martins again demanded to know why Winnie was on the mission. “She said to me, ‘hey look here, I planned this operation. Say thank you’.”
They later dropped the undercover cop off unharmed and Martins slipped away.
Months later, he would learn that Sipho had died in a shootout with security forces.
Martins later ended up working for Eskom, and from time to time would still see Winnie and reminisce.
Next week he plans to pay his last respects to the Old Lady, who made sure he lived.
“She risked her life to save mine; it was a selfless sacrifice that Winnie was prepared to make.”