African Photo Magazine Issue #8

In the 70s she was a source of inspiration to
many young people, some of whom flocked
to her home after the 1976 uprising. Some
went into exile, others remained and coached
by her, became leaders of the United
Democratic Front.
Winnie was banished to a dusty village,
Brandfort, hundreds of miles from her Soweto
home, and that, and an incident in 1969 broke
her. In 1969, security branch came to her
Soweto home at 3am. She was alone with her
daughters, aged 10 and nine. Winnie asked
to fetch her sister one street up so the girls
would not be alone. The police refused, she
was taken and her children left alone.
She spent 18 months in solitary confinement,
naked, not allowed to wash, and not allowed
out for exercises. She did not know what had
become of her girls. When she would speak
of this with me, her whole countenance
would change. She was not allowed sanitary
towels when she had periods, nor water or
cloths to clean, and so the blood caked on
her. She made friends with cockroaches. I’ve
been in the cell at the Old Fort that she was
held in. It is narrow with high, thick walls, it is
oppressively dark when the door is closed, as
it was for 18 months.
I believe she experienced profound Post
Traumatic Stress. It was never treated;
instead, she was expelled to Brandfort. She
had a classic four-room house with a biggish
yard. Money from mostly American donors
saw her build a large bedroom with a quilt on
it made by American sympathisers. She used
to wait at the Brandfort post office at around
11am each day for phone calls, or would make
phone calls out. People who visited her were
arrested and charged.
Winnie was isolated and lonely, it was here
that the drinking and drug taking began,
and affairs with younger men, including a
dreadlocked filmmaker. The conservative
black folk of Brandfort township grew to
loathe her.
Winnie Mandela in front of the house she was banished to
with her daughters in 1977during her exile in Brandfort
Winnie on Right waits for a glimpse of Nelson Mandela
outside the Palace of Justice in Pretoria on June 1964 after
his conviction of sabotage and sentence to life in prison
Winnie was detained without trial for 18 months over 1969
and 1970
Nelson Mandela and Winnie after his release from Victor
Verster prison in Western Cape in this February 11, 1990
Mandela United Football Club, it became an
instrument of torture and murder of young
men wrongly accused of being spies. At
the TRC hearings where its activities were
recounted, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who
knew her long put his head on the table and
cried.
Mandela wrote, “I have often wondered
whether any kind of commitment can ever be
sufficient excuse for abandoning a young and
inexperienced woman in a pitiless desert.”
And so, when he came out of jail in 1990 it
was with his hand in hers, even though a few
Sundays before his release her explicit love
letters to a young lawyer were released. On
the night of his return to Soweto, she left the
house in the early hours of the morning with
the lawyer in full view of the world’s media
camped outside.
Zwelakhe Sisulu who accompanied them to
the U.S.A. not long after said she would yell at
Madiba in hotel rooms. The entourage were
not sure how to cope with these outbursts.
Archbishop Tutu revealed, “Mandela said to
me that he was never so unhappy as in the
period after he was released until he decided
to leave Soweto.”
Winnie was unrepentant, she ran up huge bills
on Mandela’s tab, was convicted on multiple
counts of theft and fraud, and became an
embarrassment.
Lots of false pieties will be said about her
now. The truth is that once there was a
beautiful, proud woman who studied social
work with an older woman, Albertinah Sisulu.
Through her she met a handsome, brilliant
lawyer called Nelson Mandela. They fell in
love. He divorced his first wife to marry her.
They had two children. Their marriage was
passionate. He adored her, I don’t believe he
ever loved anyone as much. However, their
life was never normal because of his political
activities, which she embraced.
She would get visiting international
dignitaries like Senator Edward Kennedy with
his large entourage in 1985, but it deepened
resentment of her.
When she came back to Johannesburg,
in defiance of her banning order, Madiba
was already in secret communications with
the apartheid government. She formed the
Mosiuoa Lekota, Winnie and Desmond Tutu in the front line
during a Free Mandela demonstration in Cape Town 1990
Nelson Mandela and Winnie on the day of their wedding
in 1958
When Mandela went to jail he was
comparatively safe compared to the perilous
life she experienced. The apartheid state
punished her because of him, and too
because of her; she was an effective conduit
for sending young people into exile for
military training.
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