Winnie Mandela by Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob

chief’s son was brought from college, and they would be forced to get married. Columbus would have no choice but to accept the situation and the accompanying lobola. Winnie remembered the drama when her brother brought his wife to their home wrapped in a blanket, albeit with her cooperation. She had witnessed such ceremonies and seen the beseeching eyes of young brides forced into marriage as they emerged from captivity.
    Winnie knew she had only one option. She packed her bags, explained her predicament to Mr Zici and hastily left for Johannesburg. No matter what the consequences were, she would not risk being carried off to a degrading life by Chief Qaquali’s men.
    The old woman’s unthinking question had given Winnie her one chance to escape, but what she did was unthinkable for a young Pondo woman and a serious affront to the tradition of unquestioning obedience to her parents and elders. She knew her flight would cause both difficulties and embarrassment for her father, and wished she could have spared him.
    As soon as Winnie got back to Johannesburg she wrote to Columbus and begged his forgiveness for running away, but told him she could never enter into an arranged marriage. She was also able to tell him that she had been awarded her diploma in social work with distinction, and had won a prize as the best student. Winnie was one of the last graduates of the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, which was closed down by the government in terms of the Bantu Education Act soon afterwards. Later generations of black social workers were trained at what became known as ‘bush colleges’ in the various homelands.
     
    The years had sped by and Winnie was on the threshold of a career as a fully fledged social worker, but first she had to find a post. Shortly after the final results were announced, Professor Phillips summoned her to his office and told her, with a broad smile, that she had been awarded a much sought-after scholarship and could further her education by studying sociology at a university in America. Winnie was elated. Not only did this news exceed her wildest dreams, but she hadno need to worry about whether she would find a suitable position. She was going to America! She immediately rushed to the post office to send a telegram with the news to her father and Hilda.
    Her student days over, Winnie moved into one of the hostel’s ten-bed dormitories, reserved for working women. She paid 11 shillings a week for her accommodation, excluding meals but including the use of communal recreation rooms and the kitchen, where they were allowed to prepare their own food. Adelaide Tsukudu, a staff nurse at Baragwanath Hospital, slept in the bed next to hers. She was a Tswana from a farm in the Vereeniging district, about ninety kilometres south of Johannesburg, and she and Winnie became close friends, their futures destined to be entwined in ways they could never have imagined at the time.
    Adelaide was already in love with Oliver Tambo, whom she would later marry, and Winnie went with her to many ANC meetings at Trades Hall. Winnie found the meetings exciting on both a political level and because they allowed her to meet the workers, the very people she would deal with as a social worker. It was at Trades Hall that she first heard of SACTU, the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
    Adelaide and her other friends were as excited as Winnie herself about the prospect of her trip to America, and they spent many happy hours fantasising over what life would be like in the USA. Typically, Winnie scoured the library for books and information on the far-off land that would be her home for the next few years.
    But, one day, the postman brought an official envelope, addressed to her, from Baragwanath Hospital. The hospital was on the outskirts of Soweto, the only one in the area for blacks and the largest in the southern hemisphere. As a student, Winnie had often gone to Bara, as it was known, and had even lectured there, but