Weighty matter: The Cry of Winnie Mandela, on at the Market Theatre in Joburg, explores how women handle the absence of the men they love.
Waiting is an act of faith, one that tests patience in ways that can break a person. It is simple in its definition but difficult in practice; a virtue many of us do not possess.
I think of Gogo Wakhona often. She was everyone’s grandmother, an ever-present figure in the neighbourhood, yet I never knew her real name.
She lived in a one-bedroom shack a few houses away, sharing the space with her husband, children and grandchildren.
She would come to our house to do laundry for money — money that went straight to feeding those she loved — and a quart of Black Label.
But there was one she loved most, her son, a child with special needs. She never hid her devotion, often saying she loved him more than all her children combined.
One day, he disappeared. It was during a political rally in Johannesburg. Buses lined up at a local church, ready to take people from Tembisa to the city and back. He got on one and never came home.
Gogo Wakhona waited.
She searched tirelessly, asking questions long after the community had stopped answering.
While people moved on, she held onto hope, refusing to let his absence settle into permanence.
She waited until her body betrayed her. A stroke left her bedridden, her relentless search confined to whispered prayers and longing stares through her shack’s rusted window.
The waiting never ended for her. She died, I believe, from a broken heart, waiting for her son’s return.
I thought of her when I watched The Cry of Winnie Mandela, a play based on the novel by Njabulo S Ndebele and directed by the award-winning MoMo Matsunyane.
It spotlights the deeply familiar stories of women who wait — women whose lives become defined by the absence of the men they love.
The four women in the play wait for different reasons, yet their pain and resilience echo each other.
They wait for lovers who left for exile, for husbands who pursued education in foreign lands, for men who promised to return but never did.
These are not fictional characters; they are the women we know. Our mothers, our aunts, our neighbours. They are the silent pillars of our communities, often unacknowledged, forgotten, telling their stories to whoever will listen at the local tavern.
And at the centre of their stories is Winnie Mandela. She, too, was a woman who waited. But unlike others, she did not wait in silence.
She carried the weight of a nation’s cries on her shoulders, her waiting stretched across years of longing, betrayal and defiance.
The Cry of Winnie Mandela is not just a telling of her story; it is a conversation between her and other women who bear the burden of waiting.
The cast delivers performances that linger long after the final bow.
Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo steps into the role of Mandela with a haunting presence, capturing the complexity of a woman who waited in both love and anguish.
Alongside her, Rami Chuene, Ayanda Sibisi, Siyasanga Papu, Lesley Made and Pulane Rampoana embody different faces of waiting, each voice distinct yet woven into a single, collective lament.
To watch this play is to witness history repeating itself, unfolding in homes across townships and cities.
The women of this story are not relics of the past; they live among us. They are waiting, still.
Just like Gogo Wakhona did. And so, I ask: What does it mean to wait? Is it an act of hope or of suffering? Does it empower or does it break?
For some, waiting is a choice. For others, it is a sentence. And for women like Gogo Wakhona, it is both — a testament to love and a slow, quiet death.
The Cry of Winnie Mandela reminds us behind every story of waiting, there is a woman with a name, with a life that was once whole.
It forces us to remember them. Because even when they are gone, their wait never truly ends. And neither does their story.
The Cry of Winnie Mandela is at the Market Theatre until 23 March.