Mandela

by Anthony Sampson

  Mandela soon learned in jail about the attack on his house, and was mortified by the loss of family treasures. “The gutting of the house was a wicked act which I deeply detest and condemn,” he wrote to Winnie on August 1.13 “Prison had robbed me of my freedom but not my memories,” he wrote afterward. “And now I felt some enemies of the struggle had tried to rob me of even those.” But he told his lawyer Ismail Ayob that he wanted no report to the police, no prosecution or witch-hunt: “It is a matter that will be resolved by the people of Soweto.”14

  While the old house was being rebuilt Winnie moved into a more luxurious rented house in Diepkloof, complete with Jacuzzi, organized by her entrepreneurial American friend Robert Brown. Her gang moved with her, and they appeared still more uncontrollable, embarking on a “reign of terror,” as the community called it, over the next seven months. A young activist, Lolo Sono, the son of Nicodemus, had worked with Winnie helping MK fighters who had come down from the north. After one of them had been killed by a rival gang Lolo was suddenly accused of being a spy: on November 16, 1988 Winnie came to his home in her minibus, with Lolo inside, bruised and badly beaten, and told his father that he was being taken away. Nicodemus pleaded with her, but “she wasn’t the Winnie that I know. She was very aggressive. She was completely changed in her face.” She drove away. Lolo was never seen again.15 Five days later the Sonos’ neighbor Nomsa Tshabalala came home to find that her son Sibuniso, a friend of Lolo’s, had also been taken away after some young men had called looking for him, with his name written on a matchbox. He too was never seen again.16 The Truth Commission would later hold Winnie responsible for the disappearances of both Lolo and Sibuniso.17

  Winnie was dominating her home territory, and she resented the influence of the Methodist Mission House in Orlando run by a dedicated priest, Paul Verryn, which provided a sanctuary for local African boys. In mid-December 1988 a fourteen-year-old boy known as “Stompie” Seipei moved into the mission house: soon afterward Verryn went on holiday, leaving the place in the charge of a powerful woman, Xoliswa Falati, who spread rumors that Verryn was a homosexual who was interfering with boys; and also that Stompie was a spy. She began interrogating him, and on December 29 he and three other boys were abducted by the Football Club and taken to the back room of Winnie’s house in Diepkloof, where they were severely beaten by members of the club, led by Jerry Richardson, while Winnie watched. Stompie was singled out as an informer, thrown up and down and brutally assaulted. A few days later his decomposing body was found in a riverbed on the edge of Soweto, riddled with wounds; he had been stabbed three times in the neck. One boy, Katiza Cebekhulu, later claimed to have seen Winnie herself stabbing him twice in the moonlight.18 But Jerry Richardson claimed to have slit Stompie’s throat with shears “as if slaughtering a sheep,” on Winnie’s instructions: “Mami was the main decision maker.… I would be instructed to kill and I would do as I was told.”19

  The Stompie Seipei murder was, said the Truth Commission later, “one of the most serious crises ever experienced by the internal and external liberation movements.”20 The Crisis Committee, together with the respected Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, were determined to discover the truth and to defend the other three kidnapped boys, who were still in Winnie’s house. On January 11, 1989, they visited Winnie, who assured them that she was merely protecting the boys: but the visitors noticed they had fresh wounds. The Committee sent an agonized report to Tambo in Lusaka, explaining the evidence and Winnie’s intransigence: “She seems to think she is above the community! She shows utter contempt for both the Crisis Committee and the community.” They implored Tambo to act, to “meet this new ghastly situation that is developing before our very eyes.”21 On January 14 Frank Chikane wrote to Mandela: “I have been asked to plead for your intervention.… Even the lives of the Crisis Committee are at stake.” Mandela was seriously worried: he suspected that Winnie was guilty, but felt obliged as her husband to stand by her unless she was convicted.22

  By the middle of January Soweto was buzzing with stories about the death of Stompie, while the assaults and murders continued. One hundred and fifty community leaders met to protest against the outrages of the Mandela United Football Club.23 On January 27 a well-known Indian doctor in Soweto, Abubaker Asvat, was found murdered in his surgery, discovered in a pool of blood by his assistant Albertina Sisulu, the wife of Walter. Two unemployed young Africans had come to the surgery as patients, and were seen running away after the murder; they were later convicted and sentenced. Winnie suggested that Dr. Asvat was killed because only he could have proved that the boys in Verryn’s house might have been raped.24 In fact, Asvat had earlier seen Stompie’s wounds, and had refused to corroborate homosexual rape.

  The Crisis Committee had to face an agonizing showdown over the Stompie murder, confronting the famous wife of their venerated leader. “We had to do something bold and imaginative,” said Azhar Cachalia. “It was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made.” “People were at the end of their tether,” said Murphy Morobe, the Publicity Secretary of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), which had taken over from the UDF. “One thing we couldn’t afford was for our people to do something on their own.” Morobe called a press conference on February 16. Winnie would never forgive the “Indian cabal,” as she called them, sneeringly referring to “Murphy Patel.”25 Their statement was devastating.

  We are outraged at Mrs. Mandela’s complicity in the recent abduction and assault of Stompie.… Had Stompie and his three colleagues not been abducted by Mrs. Mandela’s “football team” he would have been alive today.… We are not prepared to remain silent where those who are violating human rights claim to be doing so in the name of the struggle against apartheid.26

  How would this affect Winnie’s relationship with Mandela, Morobe was asked, and he replied: “Comrade Nelson, in consultation with all the parties, will have to make a decision.”27 The demands to control Winnie were joined by the weekly New Nation, edited by Walter Sisulu’s son Zwelakhe: “Any structure that claims to represent our leaders MUST submit itself to the discipline of the people.”28

  In Lusaka, Tambo was appalled, and especially worried about the fate of Katiza Cebekhulu, who had now disappeared. He telephoned Frank Chikane in Johannesburg and told him to visit Winnie immediately, and not to leave until she had handed over Katiza. After five painful hours with Winnie, Chikane discovered the boy’s whereabouts, and arranged urgent medical attention.29 Tambo issued his own criticism of Winnie, more subdued than that of the MDM: “It is with a feeling of terrible sadness that we consider it necessary to express our reservations about Winnie Mandela’s judgement in relation to the Mandela Football Club.” She had failed to disband the Football Club, he explained, and had not cooperated with the movement: “She was left open and vulnerable to committing mistakes which the enemy has exploited.” But he still hoped that Winnie would be reintegrated into the movement. She now appeared briefly under control. “Comrade Tambo and Comrade Mandela have decided that the best thing the family should do is keep quiet,” she told the Johannesburg Sunday Times on February 19. “From now on we will be guided by Lusaka.” But she told Dutch television on the same day: “I am convinced Stompie has not been killed.”30

  Mandela advised her to be patient and to give no interviews, and wrote to her on February 16 telling her to put the case entirely in the hands of the Crisis Committee, adding: “Under no circumstances should the tracksuits be used again.” But he partly blamed the conservative media for distortions: their “real purpose is to destroy images, to sow divisions among the people, and to extend to the Rand the carnage that has plagued certain areas in Natal for several years now. WE MUST BE ABSOLUTELY VIGILANT.”31

  Fatima Meer, who saw Mandela in jail, was struck by “his distress, his capacity to assess the situation objectively and his unswerving love for his wife.”32 When Amina Cachalia saw him in February with her husband, Yusuf, she found him wanting desperately to believe in Winnie’s inn
ocence, and to get her back on track.33 “It was a painful time,” said Dullah Omar, who also saw him in jail. “He was absolutely loyal to Winnie, tirelessly concerned for her welfare, in spite of the movement’s distancing itself.”34

  On February 23 the Methodist priest Stanley Mogoba, who was closely in touch with his Bishop, Peter Storey, visited Mandela, whom he had known on Robben Island. Mandela accepted that Winnie was at fault. Mogoba explained that Storey had tried to meet her, and that it was she who had broken the press silence. Mandela thanked the Church for all it had done. “It is an ugly situation,” he agreed. He suggested that Winnie might ask forgiveness at a press conference, and promise to begin again; but Mogoba thought it might be too late.35 Mandela still hoped to help Winnie. She “is a wonderful girl; like you,” he wrote to a friend on February 28. “I would accordingly urge patience and that you be as supportive as you have always been.”36

  But in Lusaka, Tambo was now deeply worried about Winnie: “I knew things were bad,” his wife, Adelaide, said, “when he told me, ‘We must pray for her.’ ”37 After reports in the Johannesburg Saturday Star and Sunday Times, Tambo noted in his diary:

  Image in tatters w top level

  ANC image damaged

  Major Gen. Joubert investigation: this followed

  “Very difficult to find witnesses”

  Downward spiral

  Nel poised to seek divorce

  Thuggery …

  = Stompie, unearthed

  Crisis committee admitted it had dead boy to deal with.

  Statement serious allegations against WM

  Process interrupted by police announcement

  Mandela should act to save himself and ANC

  People think divorce imminent

  WM denies rift

  Tensions in marriage

  Political raids38

  In April the Afrikaner pastor Beyers Naude visited Mandela and then flew up to Lusaka to report to Tambo. Naude warned him that Winnie was “prone to irrationality,” that she was hostile to the Crisis Committee and that her “irresponsible behavior had raised suspicions that she may be cooperating with the enemy.” Tambo asked him, “Can people seriously think she is working with the system?” Naude replied that some thought so, and that they were angry that Winnie had started her own breakaway women’s organization. Tambo was exasperated, having wanted the new group dissolved: “It is exactly what we tried to prevent—division.”39

  By April the Winnie crisis had retreated from the headlines, overtaken by speculation about Mandela’s release. The police continued to investigate the Stompie Seipei case, while Sowetans still watched Winnie with mixed feelings. Many of them retained great sympathy for a woman who had been so courageous. Her neighbor Archbishop Tutu, who had asked her to be godmother to a grandchild, was one of them. “She was a tremendous stalwart of our struggle, an icon of liberation,” he said nine years later, yet “something went wrong, horribly, badly wrong.”40 But the Truth Commission would later find that Winnie “became embroiled in a controversy that caused immeasurable damage to her reputation,” and had no doubt that she was “politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the MUFC.”41

  Mandela himself could never forget how Winnie had kept the struggle alive through the worst days, and had borne the brunt of the government’s attacks in his absence. He realized that she had made serious mistakes, and suspected she was guilty; but he would remain loyal, and expected his friends to be loyal, until she was convicted. The murder of Stompie Seipei, and the lawless brutality of the Mandela United Football Club, would haunt his peaceful negotiations over the next decade, as an alternative nightmare of violence.

  27

  Prisoner vs. President

  1989–1990

  ON DECEMBER 9, 1988, Mandela was driven from the Constantiaberg Clinic to Paarl, the vineyard town thirty-five miles from Cape Town, to the Victor Verster prison, named after a former Director of Prisons. Like Pollsmoor and Robben Island it was a jail with tantalizingly beautiful surroundings. And this time he was taken not to a cell, but to a warder’s house, a large, whitewashed bungalow with a spacious garden and a swimming pool. When his four colleagues from Pollsmoor visited two weeks later they were amazed by the comfort and modern gadgetry. Kathrada wrote to his nephew: “The house itself is big and luxuriously furnished, and has wall-to-wall carpeting throughout. Even the guest rooms have their own bathrooms. The kitchen is high-tech—with stove, microwave, fridge, deep freeze, toaster, percolator.… He also had a washing machine and a tumble dryer.”

  Mandela was now looked after by friendly warders, including a personal cook, Warrant Officer Jack Swart, who made his favorite breakfast—fish cakes, poached eggs and tea with freshly baked full-grain bread—and provided elaborate lunches and dinners with wine for visiting guests. Mandela maintained his austere habits: he drank very little, preferred sweet white Nederburg wine, and only reluctantly agreed to order better dry white wine for his guests. He insisted on still making his own bed, and wanted to wash the dishes; he and Swart argued, said James Gregory, like an old married couple. Mandela was surrounded by comfort, but he was now still more cut off from his colleagues. As Kathrada wrote: “The inescapable fact remains—he is still a prisoner in his lone luxury prison. In some ways we are better off.”1

  In this privileged isolation, Mandela knew he was being prepared for freedom, but his situation was all the more difficult. He was determined to keep talking with the government, but they had their own agenda of dividing and ruling, and could easily misrepresent his position. He could only fitfully communicate with his allies inside South Africa and in Lusaka; while he had no direct contact with Western governments, which had their own objectives and misunderstandings. He was the spider in the middle of a broken web. But for fourteen extraordinary months he was at the center of intricate diplomacy with his colleagues, two Presidents and foreign leaders—which would transform his country.

  His long secret talks with the government team continued. He told them to stop seeing him as part of the problem, and to accept him as part of the solution. But they remained fearful of releasing him, and still stuck to three conditions which he could not possibly accept: the ANC must renounce the armed struggle, break with the Communist Party and abandon the principle of majority rule.

  Mandela still insisted he must talk directly with President Botha, and prepared a careful memorandum for him, which he discussed with his four Pollsmoor colleagues and then gave to the government team. It was accepted in March 1989 as a “non-paper” rather than an official document, a preliminary to eventual talks. It warned that South Africa was being split into two hostile camps, with blacks and whites slaughtering each other. It went on to explain Mandela’s objections to the government’s three conditions: (1) The ANC could not renounce violence while the government was not ready to share political power with blacks. (2) The ANC was not controlled by communists—“at no time has the organisation ever adopted or even co-operated with communism itself”—and it could not break with them. “Which man of honour will desert a life-long friend at the insistence of a common opponent and still retain a measure of credibility with his people?” (3) The government must accept the principle of majority rule. “Majority rule and internal peace are like the two sides of a single coin.”

  But Mandela ended on a positive note. He recognized that white South Africans were concerned about the ANC’s basic demand for majority rule in a unitary state. And he proposed preliminary talks to create the right atmosphere for negotiations. It would be “a time when all leaders will rise above the setting of preconditions and become themselves part of a great debate for a new South Africa.”2

  The government team expressed itself disappointed by “the revolutionary rhetoric in which the ANC has always conducted its propaganda,” and claimed to have “hard intelligence facts” that since 1964 the Communist Party “had gradually strengthened its grip on the ANC.” They were more encouraged by
the last part of the document, which showed “a readiness to put national interests above sectional interests” and to normalize the situation, and they agreed that South Africans should “solve their problems without foreign intervention.”3 But there was no progress toward talks.

  In Lusaka, Tambo was becoming more anxious. Mandela had smuggled out to him a copy of his memorandum to P. W. Botha; but Tambo did not show it to the National Executive, worried that they would misunderstand it. He was also concerned that the commitment to secrecy put Mandela at a disadvantage. “Whereas NM was observing confidentiality,” he said, “they were not.” Mandela tried to reassure him with a message to Lusaka through Beyers Naude, the trusted Afrikaner pastor. He told Tambo that the country was sliding into civil war, but that the government was “in deep trouble and looking for a way out.” Mandela’s own talks were only trying to bring the major parties to the table, and only the ANC could handle the negotiations, which would be “a matter of life and death.” Mandela had already had ten meetings with the government team over the past year, he explained: now he had given them a list of people, some in jail, whom he wanted to consult.4

  Soon afterward Mandela was visited by his attorney Ismail Ayob—they both assumed they were being bugged. Ayob went up to Lusaka to report to Tambo and the President’s Committee. There were anxious discussions. ANC leaders who had seen Mandela’s document thought it would get in the way of their campaigns, and Tambo was still worried that Mandela would appear to be giving in, as the minutes recorded: “It is not for us to ask for negotiation.… We would be displaying awareness of weakness and disposition to surrender.… As of now there’s no indication that they want to negotiate seriously.” There were concerns too about Mrs. Thatcher’s objectives. Tambo was suspicious that she was pressing for negotiation now, “while the movement seems (to her) in disarray.” But Joe Slovo noted that even Thatcher was refusing to visit South Africa unless Mandela was released and the ANC unbanned.