Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
No compromise, no surrender
Ma’m Winnie’s strength gave her freedom, writes Trevor Manuel
UNCLE Kathy, whose passing we marked the anniversary of last week, wrote the foreword to Ma’m Winnie’s haunting 491 Days, in which she recalls her days in detention from May 12 1969 to September 14 1970.
He reflects on his own prison sentence: “Yes, we were suffering. But after taking every hardship and every deprivation into account, it could not be disputed that we were protected! No policeman could barge on to Robben Island or into Pollsmoor Prison and start shooting.
“This was not the case with comrades outside prison. They were at the very coalface of struggle. They had no protection. Comrades such as Winnie Mandela, the 600 unarmed, defenceless schoolchildren who were slaughtered in the Soweto uprising; the leaders and members of the United Democratic Front and the Congress of South African Students. Individually and collectively, in the face of adversity and danger, they kept the flag flying.”
Ma’m Winnie’s harrowing account of her detention starts with the police refusing to allow her to call her sister to look after Zani and Zindzi, then aged 10 and 9.
She writes of the 200 days without any human contact; the repetitive interrogation; the fact of being stripped naked in her cell; and her calculated attempt to commit suicide. She chose to do the latter slowly because she did not wish Madiba or her daughters to be shamed.
It is in understanding a journey such as this that one begins to appreciate her depth of resolve, her caring and her search for inner strength as the big divider. One is reminded of the haunting refrain from Bob Marley’s Redemption
Song: “None but ourselves can free our minds.” Ma’m Winnie learnt to depend on her own strength, as core to that freedom.
In 2012, reflecting on her detention, she said: “Being held incommunicado was the most cruel thing that the Nationalists ever did. I’d communicate with the ants; anything that has life. If I had lice, I would even nurse them. That’s what solitary confinement does; there is no worse punishment than that. I think you can stand imprisonment of 27 years. You are mixing with the other prisoners, you get three meals a day, the only thing you have lost is your freedom of movement. Your mind isn’t incarcerated... but with solitary confinement you are not allowed to read, you are not allowed to do anything, you have just yourself.”
No person can emerge from such trauma unmoved. So this made Ma’m Winnie strong and uncompromising, and yes, difficult at times, but no person who has not been through that version of hell has any right to judge Ma’m Winnie.
But she was judged by those who wanted her to be somebody that she could never be. Some parts of the media made her out to be a political monster. In a recent article, former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke disputes this vehemently. He was part of her defence team and worked with her closely.
He writes: “She had an incredible ability to be able to take on injustice and soak up pain in a way that is not immediately describable.”
Ma’m Winnie was 26 when Madiba was sentenced to life imprisonment; she was 32 when incarcerated in this way for 491 days. And yet, the harassment and torture did not stop.
She was banned, and then on May 16 1977, she was collected with her meagre belongings and driven to Brandfort where she was banished. She’d never even heard of Brandfort. Then she was forced into this house with no running water or electricity, a house without flooring or a ceiling, and instructed to have no contact with the locals. Whatever she said of solitary confinement, banishment was also continuously cruel and inhuman punishment. No court of law was needed, just the say-so of the Minister of Justice.
That house, 802, in the township that the locals named “Phatakahle”, was designed to hurt very deeply.
Yet Ma’m Winnie turned her own pain into defiant acts of love – it was there she started a clinic to heal the forgotten victims of apartheid and a soup kitchen to feed the hungry, all of it in defiance of her order of banishment. Her friends, Doctor Motlana and archdeacon John Rushton, helped raise the resources for her to engage in these acts of love.
I’d first met Ma’m Winnie in the early 1980s when she was visiting Madiba on the Island, and then, in 1984, I drove solo from Johannesburg to Brandfort to visit her. It was, I believe, this crazy act that earned me her loyalty and affection. That affection allowed me to remain engaged with Ma’m Winnie – she offered herself as a sounding board, as a critic and as a defender. And it wasn’t only with me – Maria (Ramos) also always had a special place in Ma’m Winnie’s heart. When Maria started working at Transnet in around 2004, the situation was quite rough. One day Ma’m Winnie called her and asked to be invited to lunch. She arrived to much fanfare – everybody in the building wanted to touch her. After the meal she told Maria: “I just want you to watch this.” She put her arm over Maria’s shoulder and walked her from one office to the next saying, “This is my daughter, you mess with her, you’re messing with her Mother.” I think that was problem solved at Transnet.
That loyalty was always fierce, and it found an interesting resonance. Ma’m Winnie was fiercely loyal to the ANC throughout her life. But, it was never an exclusive loyalty – when Julius Malema says, on behalf of the EFF, that “Ma’m Winnie is our Mother”, it is completely true and correct.
She especially loved Julius and remained a fierce defender of him and the EFF. But the UDM, Azapo and other formations were also made to feel as special. And, in respect of the ANC, she was never an uncritical member or defender.
Let me digress to deal with a matter that I find rather annoying – it relates to the restoration of the house to which she was banished, House 802 in Phatakahle in Brandfort.
The restoration of the house as a museum was budgeted for a long time ago, and the project was never implemented. Now we are told by the former premier of the Free State, Elias Sekgobelo Magashule, that he has been working with the family since 2007.
This is the same premier who processed the approvals of the Estina Dairy Farm project, totalling some R220 million, in less than two weeks, who now informs us that a minuscule project has taken more than 11 years to start. The initial amount was R3m, and with that amount of money, the house could have gold-plated window frames. .
But House 802, to be a monument to Ma’m Winnie’s banishment, must be retained as a place of pain! It must be the place where public servants and schoolchildren are taken for them to see and feel the cruelty that so defined Ma’m Winnie’s life. It must be a reference point for those words Madiba used in his speech at his inauguration, “Never, Never and Never Again!”
Last year, Maria and I had heard that Ma’m Winnie had been taken to hospital. We were quite out of order – we went to Milpark Hospital where the manager didn’t ask questions, but merely said “Oh, you’ve come to see Mummy”, and took us to the ward. When we arrived Zindzi was in the ward; she came out after a while and told us that Mummy was really very ill, and that they did not think it appropriate for her to have visitors. Ok, we said, requesting Zindzi to tell Ma’m that we love her.
She relented, and suggested we go in and greet Ma’m but not expect to converse. We arrived in the ward, and from either side touched her hand. She opened her eyes, giggled and said, “I knew you two would come”. After the health pleasantries, Ma’m Winnie said, “You know that this ANC is such a disappointment. It has become a den of thieves.
I’m sure your father is turning in his grave.” She then proceeded, in fine detail, to list instances of corruption, sexual abuse, abuse of power and a litany of other ills. And said: “In the interests of your father, go and fix the movement.” I know that she was substantially (not completely, though) happy with the outcome of the 54th National Conference.
I want to say to the Spirit of
Ma’m Winnie, that spirit that we knew as “The Spirit of No Compromise and No Surrender”; to that spirit I want to ask forgiveness because I was not sufficiently courageous to emulate her, and take my personal fight to the finish. But in that admission, we must commit to A luta continua.
This is an edited version of Manuel’s speech at the memorial service for Winnie MadikizelaMandela at St George’s Cathedral on Thursday.