Winnie Madikizela-Mandela I knew

Dr NM PHOSA

I Was born in Mbombela Township in the then Eastern Transvaal (currently Mpumalanga Province) but spent most of my formative years in Pollen, in Limpopo Province. Mbombela and Pollen are far from where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was born in idutywa in the former Transkei and where she lived most of her adult life in Orlando West, in Soweto. I first heard about Winnie when I was still at higher primary school in 1964. This was after Nelson Mandela, Winnie’s husband, and his comrades had been sentenced to life imprisonment following the Rivonia trial. One day my former teacher asked me what i wanted to be after I had completed my schooling. i proudly said i wanted to be a lawyer. He retorted disappointedly, “Ah, you want to be like Mandela. You’re going to get arrested and leave your wife alone”.

After completing my high school studies at Maripi- Orhovelani in Bushbuckridge, I enrolled at the University of the North, affectionately known as Turfloop University, to study law. That is where I really began to actively participate in opposition politics. i joined the south African students’ Organisation (sAsO), a black consciousness-oriented student body, there. While studying and being involved in student politics on campus, i also had to earn a living to sustain myself and to help my mother who was living in the Eastern Transvaal. My father, who was a teacher, had passed on in 1970 and this made it difficult for my mother to support me, and my siblings, financially.

One of the various ways I used to earn some money was to sell the colliers encyclopeadia in soweto during the university’s recess. I would walk the streets of soweto, moving from house to house. One day as I was selling, I walked into a house in Orlando West. As usual, i did not know whose house it was. I found a gentleman who introduced himself as Nzima. As I walked inside the house, I saw the picture of Nelson Mandela hanging on the wall. Whispering, I asked Nzima “What are you doing with Mandela’s picture?” he looked at me and responded “This is Winnie Mandela’s house”. surprised but also excited, I enquired “Where is she?” Nzima said she’s in Brandfort. in 1977 the National Party government banished Winnie to Brandfort, a small Afrikaner-dominated town in the then Orange Free state (currently Free state Province), hoping to frustrate her political activism and force her into docility.

The government had clearly undermined Winnie. She continued where she had left off while in Soweto. she conscientised the residents of Phathakahle Township, in Brandfort. They began to defy the racist behaviour practiced by the local whites in town, which black people had come to accept as normal. In August 1985 she defied the government and returned to her house in Soweto, where she carried on with the struggle for liberation. i was in exile in Mozambique then – and from the mid-1980s we worked together carrying out underground work for the ANC.After taking over as the regional commander of uMkhonto we sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, in Mozambique, my unit worked very closely with Winnie. she became our servicing point. she was a very reliable support structure. she took many risks for the struggle with her life, irrespective of the constant arrests and loss of contact with her own children. She was a soldier through and through. And no one could remove her from that idea of being a soldier. In all the years I worked with Winnie, I don’t remember one casualty in her hands from the people we sent to her.

I remember saying that Mama [Albertina] sisulu was hiding freedom fighters behind her womb. I think I can say that about Winnie too. She hid many freedom fighters behind her womb. in 1993, after the ANC had been unbanned, I once again observed Winnie’s instinct to protect those whom she trusted and worked with. her driver got involved in a shootout with a pedestrian at the flea market. As part of the ANC’s legal department, i was requested to intervene. I went to the Brixton Police station to find out what had happened. The police were looking for the weapon used during the shootout. I went to Soweto to talk to Winnie. I asked her: “where is the weapon?” she looked at me and said “i threw it in the river. soze bas’fumane (they’ll never find it)”. I think she was bluffing, but she had hidden it somewhere. if the police could have found that weapon, they could have used it as damning evidence against her driver – and her. She trusted me with such sensitive information. The press was satisfied with my explanation, because I had been to the police station and had spoken to Winnie as well.

Winnie always exhibited an iron will demeanor in public, but she was a soft-hearted loving mother. She loved her children, grandchildren and the disadvantaged people. She was a social worker par excellence. She was always the first than any ANC leader at the site of crisis in society. Winnie was also very supportive. In 1994 when i was campaigning for the ANC, Winnie chose to come and occupy a platform with me when I delivered my first manifesto for the ANC in Mpumalanga. she was the guest speaker. she said “i’ve come here to endorse my son! My comrade; comrade Phosa. I trust he’ll run this province very well”. She chose to come and speak there because of the relationship we shared. she didn’t go to any rally of the other ANC premier candidates. Again, I felt her motherly love when I was hospitalized in 1998 after I had been involved in a car accident, which left me with a badly injured leg. While in hospital, Winnie visited me and sat on my hospital bed. I remember her asking me questions about the accident: “What happened? Are you sure it is not political?” I think one of the best traits Winnie possessed was the ability to understand military struggle and political struggle. She had an uncanny ability to combine the two very well, and to know when to use each effectively.

Her comprehension of political struggle made Winnie an ANC member par excellence. Even when she did not agree with certain policy positions, once the ANC had taken a position, she supported it unconditionally. I can still remember that after she was appointed the Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, she took the post seriously. And I cannot remember a story of corruption in that department during her tenure. She ran it with dedication and served it with the same energy she served the armed struggle. She was a very loyal public servant. I used to visit her in her office and did not believe that she had accepted a deputy minister position. But she did not demand to be a minister. She never asked to be more than a deputy minister. I think she was happy to serve even though she was deputy to some junior comrades.

The Winnie I knew was a “weapons” person, a soldier, a fearless underground operative prepared to fight the National Party government ‘till the end. But when the time came to reconstruct South Africa, post-apartheid, she was prepared to serve the downtrodden with the same energy she had exhibited during the liberation struggle.