Mention the name Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and the name Stompie Seipei immediately comes to many a South African mind. The death of this child activist in 1989 will hang around Nelson Mandela’s former wife’s neck for the rest of her life.
Stompie’s murder was a very public story — at the time it took place, when Madikizela-Mandela was criminally charged with his kidnapping and assault, and again when she appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission eight years later. To many, especially white South Africans, the death of 14-year-old Stompie defined Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The media had a field day and declared that the “Mother of the Nation” had become the “Mugger of the Nation”.
Journalists and political analysts struggled to understand that ordinary people still loved and adored Winnie, despite this dark stain on her record. All available information indicated that she was an irresponsible, power-hungry, selfish and cruel woman. How could people still call her the Mother of the Nation?
There is a story, a story too insignificant ever to make newspaper headlines, that perhaps helps to answer this question. It does not involve politics or the liberation struggle. But it does offer a private and very telling insight into another side of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
It involves an old friend and colleague of mine, a newspaper reporter named Herman Joubert. I got to know Manie, as I called him, as a highly intelligent but complex man when we both worked at the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld in the late 1970s. I liked Herman, his sharp mind and his quirky sense of humour.
The incident happened before Stompie’s murder. We only got to know about it because Herman wrote a short column in Beeld many years later, on March 7 1995. Before that, nobody knew about the story.
Herman was a sub-editor at the time, which meant that he worked from late afternoon until early morning, Beeld being a morning paper. But on this particular night he had the day off. Perhaps that was why he was overcome by a “bitter loneliness” that night. Herman wrote that by one o’clock he could still not fall asleep. “My children were far away from me, my marriage in pieces and I was on the edge of the precipice.”
He drank a beer and paged through his contact book looking at the telephone numbers. He had nobody to call. Then he noticed a number without a name next to it; probably a number he had been given by a reporter in the newsroom, but he had no idea whose it was. What the hell, he thought, he was going to phone a nameless telephone number.
A courteous young woman answered the phone and simply said: “She is not here, she’ll call you later. It sounds as if you need help.” He gave her his number, then fell asleep “in a world of horrible nightmares”.
Around 3am his phone rang. Herman had forgotten about his earlier call and wasn’t in a good mood when he answered the phone. A voice asked him if he had phoned earlier. He realised it was a black woman’s voice and was so irritated he slammed down the phone. But she phoned again. “Are you Herman?” she asked. Then she identified herself as Winnie Mandela.
Herman was in such a state that he responded aggressively, telling her that he didn’t need her help and she should leave him alone. But Winnie insisted: Why was he so lonely and depressed? What was going on in his life? Did he have children?
Herman ended up telling her his whole life’s story and all his sadnesses. Winnie listened and listened, occasionally asking a question. “For the first time in many months someone really cared and listened to what I had to say,” Herman wrote.
At the end of a long conversation Winnie told him to make himself a sandwich, to drink a glass of hot milk and to go back to sleep. She added: “Remember, you have to look after yourself. You are not alone in the world. There are people who care about you. We care about you.” She wished him a peaceful night and put the phone down.
“I followed her advice and for the first time in months I slept peacefully. I almost had the feeling that the angels were guarding over me,” Herman recalled. His life got back on track after that and he never needed to talk to her again, although he was tempted sometimes.
Herman ended his column wishing Winnie well in the difficult time she was going through (1995), and reminded her that not only bad things revisit one, but also the good one has done.
If this was Winnie’s attitude towards a total stranger, and a white Afrikaner male to boot during the most hectic time of white oppression, I can begin to understand why so many people love her and are ready to forgive her mistakes.
This is an edited extract from Max du Preez’s new book, Of Warriors, Lovers and Prophets: Unusual Stories from South Africa’s Past (published by Zebra)