Read Online Winnie Mandela by Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob - Free Book Online Page B

studied there warned against it. He said there were too few female students, with the result that the young men were always pursuing them, and it was not the right place for Winnie. So, mindful of her natural compassion for others, Columbus decided on the Hofmeyr School of Social Work in Johannesburg, the only institution that trained black social workers. But Winnie had two more years of school to complete, and she would have to do even better than before in order to be accepted as a student.
    Those years would be spent further afield at Shawbury, a Methodist mission school at Qumbu. Like many of the other pupils, Winnie would become politicisedthere. The teachers were all Fort Hare graduates and members of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), and Winnie was strongly influenced by their philosophy. She had also read about the ANC in Zonk magazine.
    Not surprisingly, her favourite teacher was a lot like Columbus, and taught his pupils about the struggle for equality in much the same way that Columbus had taught history. The two men shared a high regard for the Germans, and Winnie’s teacher venerated Bismarck. He would make his way down the long corridor to the senior classroom bellowing: ‘The unification of Germany, Bismarck believed, could not be attained through parliamentary speeches and debates, but by means of b-l-o-o-d and iron.’ 1 He always reached the classroom as he got to ‘b-l-o-o-d’, and entered to gales of laughter from the pupils.
    The struggle in South Africa, he taught, was no different. Winnie left Shawbury convinced that her people would win their freedom only by means of blood and iron. While she hated the name Winifred, she thought the diminutive, Winnie, would serve as a constant reminder of her people’s oppression, and spur her to action for change.
    Shawbury also saw the start of Winnie’s development into the striking woman who would capture the heart of more than one of South Africa’s most prominent men. Sometimes, however, her blossoming beauty drew unwelcome attention. The first time this happened was on a school outing to Tsolo. The bus stopped at Flagstaff, and the pupils were stretching their legs when one of Winnie’s friends pointed out that a dwarf was staring at her. He approached her and asked if she knew how pretty she was. Winnie was dumbstruck and had no idea how to react, but when he gave her a 10-shilling note and said it was the first instalment for her lobola [bride price], she was near panic. Before he left, he told her she would be his wife as soon as she was fully grown. Afterwards, her friends told her the man was called Khotso, that he was wealthy and something of a legend in the district, and already had many wives. Winnie was mortified but her friends laughed, and then helped her spend the money.
    The next such encounter was far more serious, and affected her schoolwork so badly that she slipped from the top of her class to thirteenth place, something that had never happened before. Her distress was exacerbated when Columbus issued a reprimand for her poor performance, and threatened that his plans for her would have to be abandoned if she didn’t pull up her socks. She ached to tell him the root of her problem, but was too ashamed. The trouble was that she looked older than her fifteen years, and was sometimes even mistaken for a teacher. The assistant principal had noticed the tall, slender young woman, and began making advances to her. As head prefect, it was Winnie’s job to fetch the keys to the bookcases from him, and one day he pressed a tightly rolled cash note into her hand. She felt so humiliated that she burst into tears. When he continuedgiving her money, she decided to confide in her fellow head prefect, Ezra Malizo Ndamase, who was also supposed to be her boyfriend, though this meant little more than working together on some school projects and sharing their duties as prefects. When Winnie told Ezra what had happened, she started crying, and a