Winnie might have been the figurehead, but there were countless others. In 2018, when much was being written about her life and death, the feeling was that she had ‘multiplied’ as women rallied together. Back then, they were multiples, hundreds if not thousands of women who shared the strength and the pain of a common experience during the struggle. There were women’s movements around the country which made remarkable impact.
Years after her detention in 1969, Winnie wrote: ‘When I was in detention for all those months, my two children nearly died. When I came out they were so lean; they had had such a hard time. They were covered in sores, malnutrition sores. And they wonder why I am like I am. And they have a nerve to say, “Oh Madiba is such a peaceful person, you know. We wonder how he had such a wife who is so violent?”
‘The leadership on Robben Island was never touched; the leadership on Robben Island had no idea what it was like to engage the enemy physically. The leadership was removed and cushioned behind prison walls; they had their three meals a day.
‘In fact, ironically, we must thank the authorities for keeping our leadership alive; they were not tortured. They did not know what we were talking about and when we were reported to be so violent, engaged in the physical struggle, fighting the Boers underground, they did not understand because none of them had ever been subjected to that, not even Madiba himself – they never touched him, they would not have dared. We were the foot soldiers.’10
The trial was mentioned in some of the eulogies at Winnie Mandela’s funeral, reminding the country that about 50 years before, these 22, which included seven women, were tortured by the apartheid government’s security branch and held in solitary confinement, without sight of their families, for days, weeks, months … For nearly two years, deprived of sensory experiences, they were held in small, single cells.
There are hints and allusions to post-traumatic stress experienced by those involved in the struggle for liberation. It was a long drawn-out fight that spanned generations in its effect. But the specific focus on the women in this trial is because history tells us that female experience of political activism and detention was vastly different from that of the men. Gender-specific violence, emotional torture – even the manner in which they are remembered – is important in understanding the past and present South Africa, and the country’s collective mental state.
The activism of women in the struggle against apartheid was vital. Women took on central political roles where gaps were left by imprisoned male leaders. They took on additional political roles to their personal ones, abandoning the societal expectation of motherhood and nurturing, or in spite of it. These mothers, daughters and sisters who contributed and fought on the streets even after their release, are important. Their bodies and minds were tortured in unimaginable ways, their own children used as collateral against them. Few remember debriefing or any kind of counselling. They were too busy fighting the long fight, surviving.
The women who were kept at Pretoria Central Prison were detained precisely in order to be broken. Every detail of their time in prison was malevolently concocted. From the beautiful gardens they could see out of the cracks of their cell walls, with manicured grass lawns and roses on one end to the gallows on the other. They were purposely placed close enough to see freedom, and where they would be able to hear their comrades and common criminals alike wail while walking to their assault or death.
They kept their minds busy in any way they could, sewing and re-sewing the hems of their skirts, folding and refolding their meagre linen, walking the few steps between concrete walls as exercise, anything to keep their minds away from what they did not know: who in their families was dead or alive, whether their children had eaten that day, if they were doing their homework.
Winnie Mandela’s story is well known and well documented, but many stories of the other women who chose to get involved and suffered horribly in detention and prison for their courage and convictions, are hardly known at all. As that generation ages and memories fade, their prison experience and what they did afterwards, building a resistance movement that is known worldwide, is fading too.
The year 2019/2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the detention of those of the Trial of 22, and the stories of the seven women involved have not thus far been told collectively or in the context of their emotional experience. They would not have known then, but hopefully we do now, that in surviving detention and standing up for their comrades in the Trial of 22 they bravely paved the path to democracy.
Sadly, the personal stories of Martha Dhlamini and Thokozile ‘Venus’ Mngoma have gone with them to the grave. They were older than the others and would have been matriarchal to the younger women. While it is known that the two remained active in their community in Alexandra township, there is fragmented information about their lives, and their time in detention.
That they were heroines, there is little doubt.
Former president Thabo Mbeki invited Martha to a Women’s Day event in 2006, the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March, held at the Union Buildings in Tshwane. Mbeki said in his address: ‘Martha Dhlamini remains to this day a freedom fighter, having refused to be broken by the detentions and the banning orders that the apartheid regime thought would destroy her determination to see the women and people of our country liberated from the yoke of racist oppression.’11
He recalled a speech she had made in Alexandra in which she described her journey. She became actively involved in politics in the late 1950s, organising a protest for women during the Potato Boycott, against the abuse of labourers on potato farms in Bethal in the former Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga).
Martha was an early member of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW), which organised the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria against the introduction of the apartheid pass laws for black women. She was also a key figure in the presentation of a petition to the then Prime Minister JG Strijdom. The nationwide mobilisation against pass laws for women on 9 August 1956 is now celebrated as Women’s Day in South Africa. Along with women leaders Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, Sophia Williams-De Bruyn and Lillian Ngoyi, Martha headlined the protest of 20 000 fellow South African women.
She was dedicated to the women’s movement. In her speech, Martha said: ‘We organised demonstrations in town under the leadership of Lillian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph. We were arrested and taken to Number 4 prison.’ Nelson Mandela was their legal representative. After they were discharged Martha was arrested again in 1960 when ‘the government swooped the whole country’ – this was during the state of emergency which saw 18 000 people arrested. ‘I was taken again to Number 4 prison.’12
Now part of the Constitution Hill Human Rights precinct in Braamfontein, Number 4 and Number 5 prisons were where black prisoners were held; the precinct includes the Old Fort, 11 Kotze Street, which housed white prisoners, yet another manifestation of apartheid separation, and the apex court, the Constitutional Court. Referring to Number 4 and Number 5, the Constitution Hill exhibition reads: ‘These sections held large communal cells that were overcrowded, rife with disease, and gang violence. Food was rationed according to racial groups, with African men receiving the smallest and least nutritious portions. Former political prisoners incarcerated at Number 4 include Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian civil rights leader; Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress; and Albert Luthuli, former ANC president.’
It was a horrid place, where women were not allowed to wash for weeks on end. Typhoid fever raged through the prison community. A disturbing story was that of activist Phila Ndwandwe, who was tortured and kept naked for ten days before she was assassinated. Before her death, Ndwandwe reportedly fashioned underwear for herself out of a scrap of blue plastic, in an attempt at some dignity. The plastic underwear was installed as an artistic symbol in the precinct.
Martha Dhlamini was also a member of the original Congress of the People, which adopted the Freedom Charter. The historic document pledged to continue the struggle until a new democratic order was put in place. It was a concrete wish list for the country, following the doctrine that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it’ and that ‘all shall be equal before the law’.13