Читать книгу The Verwoerd who Toyi-Toyied - Melanie Verwoerd - Страница 12

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Three weeks after Wilmé’s birth, Wilhelm and I returned to South Africa. Although we were excited to go back, for me it was a sad farewell to Oxford. Apart from the usual hormone-driven days after the birth of my first baby, I was also unsure about what was waiting for us back in South Africa. Mandela had just been released, but violence was escalating daily. Family and friends were anxious about the future (if any) for whites, and the economy was on its knees.

To make matters worse, conscription was still in force. Wilhelm had so far avoided doing military service by studying, but we knew that the moment he returned to South Africa, he would have to do his time (which had recently been reduced from two years to six months) or face six years in jail. Politically this posed a huge dilemma, since much military activity was in the townships, directed against the struggle – a cause we believed in.

On a personal level, I was unhappy about being left on my own with Wilmé while trying to adjust to life back in South Africa.

In the weeks before we left, Wilhelm received various calls from head-­hunters for British companies, but in the end we both knew we would not stay in Britain. We wanted to go back to our roots. We wanted to make a difference, however small, during the transition. Above all, we felt that we had received much from a country with a system that benefited us while discriminating against others, and that we had a duty to give something back.

In the end, we nearly did not make it back to South Africa. For some bizarre reason, between packing, breastfeeding, saying goodbye and recovering from the birth, I never thought about the fact that Wilmé might need a passport. I just assumed that the birth certificate would be sufficient for her to travel with us. Two days before our planned departure, I went for my last postnatal check-up at the John Radcliffe Hospital. In the waiting room, I chatted to a mum next to me about our imminent departure. She mentioned something about a passport for Wilmé, and it dawned on me that we might have a problem. This set off a wild panicked trip to London, and after a lot of begging at the South African embassy on Trafalgar Square, we got a travel document for Wilmé.

Back in South Africa, we settled into an apartment around the corner from my parents’ home, and about ten minutes away from Wilhelm’s parents. I found being back very difficult. While Wilhelm went to work every day – he quickly got a job as a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch – I was at home with our little baby. Even though I was besotted with Wilmé, I was bored and claustrophobic – not only in the flat but also in South Africa. I found people’s attitudes very small-minded and I missed Oxford. I wanted at least to try and finish my thesis, but between household chores and not sleeping, I did not make much progress. This caused a lot of conflict with Wilhelm. It shocked me how happy he was to accept the traditional gender divisions – reminding me that he was the breadwinner and needed to prepare for the next day’s lectures in the evening, and rest during the night. I was deeply unhappy.

Fortunately, the South African parliament finally put an end to conscription just weeks before Wilhelm was due to report for duty. Although I was thankful for this, I sometimes wondered if I would have noticed if Wilhelm had not been at home. I needed something to do – a challenge. So I decided to build a house. Since Wilhelm’s job was not well paid and we did not have a lot of money, we bought at an auction a plot of land in a beautiful new development called Paradyskloof. We designed a simple house with the idea of extending it later. We did not have the money to employ a builder, so I took charge of hiring labourers and ordering all the supplies. We were building during the hottest time of the year, and with six-month-old Wilmé on my hip it was hard going. Wilmé thought it was the funniest thing in the world to spit her dummy into wet cement and then wait for the shocked ‘yo-yo-yo’ cries of the African tradesmen, who would run to rinse it off. I had wanted a challenge, and I got one.

Despite keeping the budget extremely low (I think I built the house for the equivalent of just over R100 000), it soon became clear that we would not survive on Wilhelm’s salary. Having grown up in an academic household, I knew that a lecturer’s salary was not huge but that you could live comfortably on it. But Wilhelm’s was very low, partly because he was at entry level and had not finished his doctorate, and also because a more discretionary system was now in place. I felt Wilhelm should at least ask for more money, but he would not. Our different attitudes to money would become a major source of tension throughout our marriage. I had to find a job. In principle I wanted to work, but between looking after the baby, planning to finish my thesis and building the house, it was difficult to see what I could do.

Eventually I found a part-time position as an assistant in the university library, a post I shared with another mother. I hated the job. I found it mind-­numbing dealing with grumpy students, and packing and sorting books. To make matters worse, I was paid the minimum wage (R5.60 per hour). Day after day, I would watch the clock and count the few cents I was making as the time ticked by. I knew I could not do this for long, and a frustration and determination grew in me. I will not do this for the rest of my life, I kept thinking. To make matters worse, Wilhelm seemed to be moving forward, researching, lecturing, publishing and going to conferences. In everyone’s eyes, he was the next generation of Verwoerds: hyper-intelligent and destined for big things. I, on the other hand, was Mrs Wilhelm Verwoerd.

Luckily, there were some lighter moments. One day, after dropping Wilmé with Wilhelm’s mum, I rushed to the library. Already late for my shift, I searched for my security tag to get through the security gate, but could not find it. I knew it was somewhere in my messy handbag, so I started unpacking the bag on the table next to the gate. Out came a baby bottle, a night nappy, a few biscuits, a squashed banana, a few dry diapers for Wilmé, two dummies, my wallet and keys – all covered in traces of baby hands and something sticky. At some point, I heard a giggle behind me. Turning around, I saw a group of students looking at me and the contents of my bag in amazement. I was only 24 years old and looked very young, but this was no regular student bag! At least the baby experience gave me some practice in dealing with the ‘demands’ of the job.

A year or so later, I was on counter duty in the library. Yet again, some stressed-out student was losing his cool because the book he needed was already out on loan. Having dealt with the beginnings of a two-year-old’s tantrums at home, I inadvertently slipped into my ‘mummy’ mode. Using a slow, well-verbalised, over-calm voice, I bent forward and said: ‘Now, I cannot help you if you shout, because I do not understand you. Take a deep breath – go on, in and out – and when you have calmed down, tell me what you want, and if I can, I will give it to you. No need for this.’ I heard the suppressed laughter from the other staff next to me, as well as the giggles from the other students behind him. But it did the trick.

The one part of the job I did enjoy was the interaction with the coloured and black workers. They were in the very low-paid positions, but we quickly connected and would have long political discussions. We were careful not to be overheard, since the mostly female, all-white Afrikaner librarians were extremely conservative. Political discussions like the ones we were having would have been frowned upon.

This was a time of great upheaval and uncertainty on the political front. In the early 1990s, the multi-party negotiations started. The violence was widespread and increasing, and at this stage it was mainly black-on-black. It filled our TV screens night after night. In fact, more people died in political violence between 1990 and 1994 than in the preceding ten years. Right-wing white politicians and church leaders were instilling more and more fear, and neo-Nazi movements such as the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstands­beweging), with the charismatic (in Hitler-like fashion) Eugène Terre’Blanche at its head, gained momentum.

Wilhelm and I were watching the situation closely. I was part of a feminist discussion group and through one of the members, Wina du Plessis, the dynamic wife of Professor Lourens du Plessis, I heard that there was an ANC branch in the ‘white’ part of town. I knew that I wanted to do more, become more involved, so I cautiously made contact through Wina.

To say that it was a branch is perhaps something of an exaggeration. At any stage, there were never more than eight to ten white members. I first wanted to see if I would fit in, and quickly became close to the driving forces in the branch: Annie Gagiano (a dynamic professor in the English department), Wina du Plessis (a great feminist), Zelda Dalling (who was married to an independent MP) and Rudolf Mastenbroek (head of the student organisation NUSAS). Wilhelm supported my investigations, even though he was cautious. The ANC town branch met frequently in Zelda’s comfortable house, but I was not quite ready to sign up yet. This was about to change, thanks to two extraordinary Africans.

I had met Nomajoni (Emily) Makwena in 1988. Wilhelm and I looked after the three children of one of Wilhelm’s colleagues while the parents went overseas for three weeks. Emily (as I knew her then) was their live-in domestic worker. We immediately hit it off and would talk for hours. She is an exceptionally bright, caring and charming woman. We kept in touch afterwards, and when Wilhelm and I were in Oxford we wrote letters. On our return to South Africa, she begged me for some part-time work. I was reluctant because of the power relations and the trap of racial stereotypes, but Emily was clear: ‘That’s your problem, not mine. I need a job, I know you will pay me well, and we will stay friends. Deal with it!’ As always, she was right.

Emily (and her son Luthando) gradually became an inextricable part of our family. Even though she started with only one afternoon a week, she gradually worked more and more, and by the time our second baby, Wian, was born, she was with us full-time. At times, when she had personal problems, she and Luthando would live with us. She quickly became my children’s other mother, and they adored her (and still do). She in turn would talk of them as her children and would scold me if she thought that my parenting was not up to scratch.

Far more importantly, Emily became my bridge to the political world and the other South Africa that I did not know. Through her stories and explanations, I started to gain an insight into the lives that millions of Africans led in South Africa. She took me into the townships and showed me around, introducing me to the women. Through her patient education, my eyes were opened to the brutal realities of life in the townships, and of being black in South Africa.

In particular, the lives of the domestic workers distressed me. When I was growing up, we were the exception to most white South African homes in that we never had a full-time domestic worker. My mum, despite being a professional woman who always worked, did almost everything herself. From time to time we had someone come in for a few hours once a week to clean, but even that made my mum uncomfortable. When she designed and built our various houses, she never included a ‘maid’s room’, as was the practice, and begrudgingly had an outside toilet, only because it was a legal requirement. So the world of the live-in domestic worker was a shocking new discovery for me.

As I met more of Emily’s friends, I could not believe the conditions in which they were living and working. They had no formal hours and had to be on call 24 hours a day. Their average salary was less than R200 per month, and if anything broke, it was deducted from their pay. They rarely had leave (and often had to go with the family on holiday, to cook, clean and mind the children) and were not allowed to have partners or husbands stay over. Their rooms had no hot water, sometimes no electricity, and just a toilet (with no basin or shower). Often there was only a mattress on the floor. The most distressing thing was that, if they became pregnant, they had to send their baby away to their family in the rural areas – they rarely saw them afterwards – while they were raising the white family’s children. I was appalled. It was the early 1990s, not the 1700s!

What I found most baffling and infuriating was that I knew many employers personally. They were mostly well-off, educated, middle-class women, well known in Stellenbosch, who pretended to be defenders of human rights. These experiences caused more and more arguments between me and these women at social functions. The problem was that domestic workers, like farm workers, enjoyed little, if any, protection under the law. Something had to be done.

Emily and I decided to set up an organisation to defend the rights of domestic workers in Stellenbosch. I would negotiate a contract with the employer and monitor their conditions. Emily would be the head-hunter and trainer. Emily quickly had a list of competent women. We drew up their curricula vitae and I advertised our service. I started receiving calls from white women, but found the negotiations a sobering experience. I insisted on contracts, and that we would inspect the living conditions first. We also demanded decent wages, as recommended by the domestic workers’ union. We had a few successes, but for the most part our venture did not go down well, and word quickly spread that I was involved in Communist activities with ‘the blacks’. I was conscious that I was increasingly being pulled away from ‘my community’ and, like quicksand, sucked into the arms of another. But it was only after a meeting with one of the most exceptional men ever to live that my life took a radical new turn.

About a year after his release, Nelson Mandela was invited to a private meeting with some progressive Afrikaners in Stellenbosch. The cocktail party was to be held at Jannie Momberg’s house. Jannie was a very affluent Afrikaner. A former wine farmer, he had sold his farm, Neethlingshof (where Wilhelm and I had had our wedding reception), and gone into politics. He had truly done the rounds. He originally joined the right-wing Conservative Party, then switched to the governing National Party, but as things progressed he crossed the floor to the Democratic Party. (He later joined the ANC and became one of the senior whips in the new parliament.) Wilhelm and I knew the family through their children, who were our peers, and I was pleased – although slightly apprehensive – when Oom Jannie invited us.

The meeting caused a stir in Stellenbosch. On the night, various members of the press were present. Mandela, with his amazing charm, quickly put everyone at ease, and people started to talk to him. Being academics, they tended to keep their emotions under control and engage more intellectually.

We hung back, but at some point Oom Jannie spotted us. Never a very discreet diplomat, he pushed everyone away and pulled us closer, then introduced us to Mandela. The moment Mandela heard the surname, his eyes lit up. ‘Ah, I am so honoured to meet you,’ he said in a sincere, warm voice. My heart was racing. I had no doubt that we were in the presence of greatness. How could he be honoured to meet us – especially with the surname? After all, it was Wilhelm’s grandfather, the architect of apartheid, the symbol of oppression, who had banned the ANC, and it was during his time as prime minister that Mandela had been incarcerated.

Wilhelm started to talk politics, and then tried to apologise for his family’s role in Mandela’s personal suffering.

But Mandela stopped him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you only need to remember that with the surname you both carry, you have a voice. People will listen to you. So you have to think carefully what to do with that power.’ He paused for a moment, then said: ‘By the way, how is your grandmother?’

Slightly taken aback, Wilhelm explained that she was well, even at 92, and, slightly embarrassed, admitted that she had moved to Orania, a whites-only enclave in the Northern Cape.

Mandela looked at us earnestly and said: ‘If she will not get angry at you, please send her my regards. Tell her from an old man that I am happy that she has reached such a great age.’

By now I was shaking. What an extraordinary man: no bitterness, no anger. After 27 years of being unfairly imprisoned, he did not seek revenge. In fact, the opposite: he sent his sincere regards to the wife of the man who was behind his incarceration. How could we have been fed such lies all our lives? Mandela the terrorist. Mandela the dangerous, evil monster. Mandela who hated everything white. I vaguely registered that a photographer took a photo and that journalists were eavesdropping.

That night I could not sleep; over and over I heard Mandela’s words: ‘You have a voice. People will listen. Think carefully what you do with that power.’

The next day there was a piece on the ‘Verwoerd–Mandela meeting’ in the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger. Before long, we were summoned to the Verwoerd house. Wilhelm’s father took Wilhelm into his study, where they remained for hours. As the wife, I was not to be involved in the political discussion, which was seen as men’s business. When Wilhelm finally emerged, I could see that he was tired and shaken, but also angry. His father had lectured him on his naivety, the danger of people such as Mandela, the need for separation of the races, and of course the need for loyalty to the family. Wilhelm felt patronised, but also misunderstood, and remained in an angry, introspective mood for days.

Having been excluded from the conversation, I took note of it, but did not reflect on it too much. I tried to speak to Wilhelm, but, as was his usual practice, he withdrew into his own world of reflection. I continued with my work in the library and, on my free days, with the domestic workers. But Mandela’s words stayed with me.

Two days after our meeting, I drove home after yet another infuriating meeting with a potential employer. It was around 5pm, and as I drove into our neighbourhood, Paradyskloof, I watched the regular exit of black women to Kayamandi township on the outskirts of Stellenbosch. These women did not ‘live in’, but worked during the day in the luxury houses of the white women. At night they left to go home to their little tin shacks. Many recognised me by now and waved and gave me big smiles, shouting: ‘Kunjani sisi?’

Mandela’s voice rang in my ears: ‘You have a voice, you have a voice.’ A deep sense of sadness and tiredness came over me. ‘Sikona, mama, enkosi!’ I replied, waving back. But I knew that, even though they called me ‘Sisi’ and I respectfully called them ‘Mama’, it was still ‘us’ and ‘them’. Us whites, them blacks. Us in the affluent neighbourhoods, the good schools, the good churches. Them in the shacks, the overcrowded schools, the outdoor churches. Even my R5.60 an hour at the university library was a fortune compared to what they were earning.

‘I am so tired of these divisions,’ I said aloud. And then I knew I had to do something big, to step across this divide. I loved these women; they had become my friends; they were kind, caring and gentle. They were politically skilled and informed, even though very few of them had formal education. These were the people I felt at home with – in contrast to the women I worked with in the library or met at the mother-and-baby groups. The women from Kayamandi talked about Mandela, economic oppression, and their hopes for their children’s future – while always singing and laughing. The white women complained about their maids, the horrible possibility that the blacks would take over, and how we all had to emigrate, for our children’s sake.

I wanted to cross this us-and-them divide, and the only way I knew how to do that was to join the ANC, the only truly non-racial party in South Africa at that stage. I had for years read their policies and met with their members and leadership. I knew I would feel at home there. I also knew that joining the ANC would probably cause more trouble with Wilhelm’s family, but being ‘the wife’, they probably would not notice – and we certainly would not be drawing it to their attention.

Back home, I discussed my plan with Wilhelm, who was fine about it. He would not join yet, because of his fear about his family’s reaction, but he agreed – not that anything would have stopped me. So later that evening, I drove over to Zelda’s house, filled in the yellow membership form and paid my R10 fee. With these few simple actions, I became a member of the ANC. I asked them not to say anything about it, not that they intended to. After all, I was not a true Verwoerd, so no one would be interested – or so I thought.

For the next six months, I regularly went to ANC meetings at Zelda’s house, where we were briefed on political developments. I was still working at the library but, increasingly, I was leading a double life, with ANC meetings and domestic-workers business at night and serving white Afrikaner students by day. Passing some of the black or coloured workers in the library or on campus, they would now quietly say ‘Hello comrade’, but nobody said anything openly. I was also pregnant with our second baby and dealing with morning sickness and tiredness; but thankfully, this time all was going well.

On 17 March 1992, President FW de Klerk called for what was to be the last white referendum. The question (asked of the white voters) was whether he had a mandate to continue negotiating with the ANC. I was working that day and the atmosphere was tense, with more than the usual irritable and racist comments about where the country was going. The ‘comrades’ kept passing me little notes on the way to the bathroom with information they had received from various places around the country. After work, I went down to the town hall to vote. I met Wilhelm and Wilmé there. Wilmé had on a little sun hat that some campaign worker had given her, with the word ‘Ja’ on it. A photographer took a shot, and she was in the local paper the next day. As I left after casting my vote, I bumped into Annie Gagiano. She was on her way to the annual general meeting of the ANC in Kayamandi and insisted that I come with her. I agreed.

In the township, it was of course business as usual, since the referendum was only for the whites. I was met by the now-familiar smell of fires and the sight of raw, fly-covered meat being sold at the side of the road. Radios were blaring everywhere, and people shouted greetings and news to one another – sometimes from several blocks away. There was a buzz and liveliness, and a sense of community in the townships that is hard to describe.

We parked the car on the road and wove our way through the rows of shacks. It was dark, so we had to step carefully to avoid the raw sewage running between the shacks. We finally came to a spot where a few shacks were put together, with a sign proclaiming ‘Community Hall’ above the door. Inside, it was spotlessly clean. There were rows of benches and the place was packed. Annie, Rudolf Mastenbroek and I were the only white people there.

As always, the meeting was opened with prayers (so much for the ANC being anti-religious, as we were always told by the government) and the singing of ‘Nkosi Sikelele’. I had heard it sung many times before and knew most of the words, but I had never stood among a hundred or more African people, all singing it with deep emotion. I had goosebumps and felt tears in my eyes. After the chants of ‘Viva ANC!’, ‘Long live Nelson Mandela!’ and ‘Amandla!’, we settled in for various speeches and reports. We all sat tightly squeezed on the backless benches with rain pelting on the corrugated-­tin roof. Every fifteen minutes or so, the light coming from a single bulb hanging from the roof would go out. Exasperated exclamations would follow, and a child would be sent out to fix the problem.

Kayamandi was linked to the electricity grid, but only a handful of older houses, the municipal building and the police station had electricity. Frustrated, people would hack into the mains supply; the area above the shacks looked like a spider’s web of wires, all connected in an amateurish fashion. This was of course extremely dangerous, and people were regularly electrocuted. The community hall’s light was hooked up to five extension cords that were running outside on the wet ground to a comrade’s shack, which was in turn illegally hooked to the mains supply. But every time the owners wanted a cup of tea, the supply to the community hall was disrupted.

The child would report back that the comrade said that he, or someone else, needed a cup of tea and would be done in five minutes. Everyone would murmur understandingly, and then wait quietly in the pitch dark until there was light again. Then the meeting would continue as if nothing had happened.

This was a completely different world for me. I thought how all the people I knew, including my family, would react if they knew I was sitting shoulder to shoulder in the pitch dark in a big shack in Kayamandi. They would be sure that I would be killed. But I felt completely safe – and indeed thrilled by it all. In fact, it struck me that no one took much notice of me or Annie or Rudolf. That was the essence of the ANC: it was truly non-racial. If you joined, you were a comrade, and that was all that counted. Of course, you had to be loyal, but I had expected that, as a white with the surname ‘Verwoerd’, I would have to deal with many questions and suspicions. But there never were any.

Towards the end of the long evening, the elections for the new executive were held. Annie was nominated, but declined because of work pressure. She then nominated me. Before I could protest, the nomination was seconded, hands flew into the air in support, and I was elected. Rudolf, who was secretary, and would become a very close friend, came over and said: ‘Welcome. This is going to be interesting.’

As we drove back through the quiet, wet, oak-lined streets of Stellenbosch, I thought about the contrasts of the day. The results of the white referendum suddenly seemed so irrelevant in the light of the evening I had just experienced. I was now a member of the Stellenbosch ANC executive!

After my election onto the executive, my life became very full. Briefings, organising marches, consulting with our members and signing up new members took much of our time. There were also frequent meetings in the ANC’s little office close to Du Toit Station. The chairperson was Patrick Xegwana, a messenger at the university. He was a strong but quiet leader with a big heart. He lived with his wife and children in a tiny shack in Kayamandi. I had enormous respect for him and was distraught when he drowned a few years later while trying to save his child’s life. Other members were Mpumi Hani (a relative of the Chief of Staff of MK, Chris Hani), Malcolm Ncofe (a teacher), Oom Tom Ncungwa (a trader who sold meat in an open stall on the street in Kayamandi) and Franklin Adams (a fiery coloured guy, who had many small-business ventures). We were later joined by the deeply religious, but equally fiery Faghrie Patel. And of course Rudolf Mastenbroek and I were there too.

Meetings usually started 30 to 45 minutes late (‘African time’ being the excuse), but were extremely structured and organised. There were a few rules: 1. You always spoke through the chair and were not allowed to make personal attacks; 2. Smoking was allowed, but only one person at a time; 3. Everyone got a chance to speak for as long as he or she wanted. But then the meeting decided on the issue at hand – preferably by consensus. And once the meeting had decided, that decision had to be respected. This was equally true of the small meetings of the executive and of the big community meetings. Even though this approach meant that meetings could go on for hours, it taught me valuable lessons about leadership, decision-making and the power of the collective.

We frequently held executive, subcommittee and big community meetings where not only political issues, but also some of the everyday challenges of our members were discussed. I was then sent to do battle on behalf of residents of Kayamandi with the local council, to sort out various concerns such as the lack of water, sanitation and housing. The executive felt that my surname and command of Afrikaans might just help, although I sometimes felt that their anger at this white ‘traitor’ made the white officials even less cooperative.

All this work meant that I was becoming a familiar face around Kayamandi, as was Wilmé. She would often stay with Emily in her house in Kaya­mandi, playing with Luthando while I was working. This was a source of great interest to the people of Kayamandi. Very few whites ever went to the townships at that stage, and to leave your young child with someone there was simply never done. But I knew that she was safe and that she loved the endless attention from the curious and doting African women. Later, Wian would stay there too: as soon as he could walk, he could not wait to run around the shacks with all the boys and play soccer in the street. Often, when I drove back into the township to pick them up, I would stop the first person I saw and ask them if they knew where my children were. The person would shout to someone a few blocks away, who would shout to others, and within a few seconds we would know where the mlungu children were. Far more efficient than cell phones!

When Emily was busy, Wilmé would come with me to meetings. This usually went well, since most of the women would have their little ones there too. One night, however, things became a bit crowded. We had a small subcommittee meeting, but the person with the key to the office never arrived. The wind was howling so we could not hold the meeting outdoors. Our only option was to have it in Rudolf ’s car, so six of us (and Wilmé) squeezed into his car. The meeting went fine, but Wilmé, who was two years old, was getting restless. She spotted Rudolf chewing bubblegum and ‘whispered’ loudly that she wanted some too. I did not have any, so I interrupted the ‘meeting’ to ask Rudolf if he had any more. He did not. I explained to Wilmé that there was none, but she insisted: ‘Ludolf [as she called him] has some!’ She was getting upset, and no amount of explaining would help. Eventually Franklin said: ‘For God’s sake, Rudolf, spit out the gum and give it to the child.’ Rudolf looked at me, I nodded, and Wilmé sat quietly for the rest of the meeting chewing away on ‘Ludolf ’s’ recycled gum.

Wilmé’s political exposure meant that she quickly imitated some of aspects of the meetings. She knew how to throw her little fist into the air and shout ‘Amandla’ or ‘Viva Mandela’. This she did with gusto, not only at meetings, but every time she saw Mandela or ANC images on TV. She quickly mastered the toyi-toyi, and during the rolling mass action that Mandela called following the breakdown of negotiations, she often came with me on protest marches. She had a standard ‘survival kit’ that always came too. It consisted of at least three dummies (one in her mouth and one for each hand), a teddy bear, and of course her sippy cup with juice. But as soon as the toyi-toying started, she would hand me the dummies, teddy and juice and jump like a pro. One African man once said to me: ‘That piccanin is almost black!’ There were never more than a handful of whites in our marches, so between the dummies and teddy, and my daughter jumping around like a mad thing, we were a sight to behold. To top things off, by this stage I was heavily pregnant with Wian.

Wilmé’s political fervour nearly exposed our involvement in the ANC to Wilhelm’s parents. By now I was truly living a double life. During the day, I was working at the university, but at night and weekends I was Comrade Melanie, and I would spend all my time working for the ANC. Up to this point, no one in the white community, apart from a few ANC members, knew about my involvement in the organisation, and we went to great lengths to hide it from Wilhelm’s parents.

One evening I took Wilmé for a visit to my mother-in-law. I was preparing some supper for Wilmé while she was playing on the carpet, close to her grandparents, who were watching the news. From the kitchen, I suddenly heard the reporter giving an account of an ANC protest march that had taken place that day, and images of toyi-toying young people flashed across the screen. Through the door, I saw Wilmé’s head turning sharply towards the TV. I knew what was coming. I saw her get up and her little fists forming, ready for a big ‘Viva the ANC!’ Even though I was heavily pregnant, I flew into the room and grabbed Wilmé just as she was taking a deep breath. She was so amazed by my swinging her into the air unexpectedly that, thankfully, she lost interest in the TV, and my in-laws were none the wiser.

Although this was a close call, I was silently hoping that they would never find out. I knew they would not approve, but I never anticipated what was about to happen. About a month before Wian was born, the political journal Die Suid-Afrikaan, edited by Chris Louw, had a short paragraph on its back page under the heading ‘A rose by any other name’. The author said that he had heard a rumour that there was a Verwoerd on the Stellenbosch ANC executive. ‘Could it be true?’ he wondered. ‘And is this an effort to clear the Verwoerd name?’ It would take a lot more than my involvement to do that, I thought. Even though I was concerned about the reference, I knew that Wilhelm’s parents would never read this magazine.

A few days later, the Sunday Times phoned. This would be my baptism of fire with the media, and set in motion a series of events that would change my life. The journalist said he had confirmation of my membership and gave me an ultimatum: either I give him the interview and we work together, or he would write the story without me. He gave me an undertaking that he would not approach Wilhelm’s parents if I gave him a brief interview. Today I would never believe such an undertaking, but I was young (I had just turned 25), and desperate to avoid conflict with Wilhelm’s parents, so I agreed.

We met in a coffee shop in Stellenbosch. The interview went well, but as we left, the journalist said: ‘You know, as part of my journalistic integrity, I have to ask Wilhelm’s parents for a comment.’ I was furious. I told him he had broken his word, but he did not care. He eventually agreed to give us a few hours to tell the Verwoerds first. Although the interview was about my involvement in the ANC, he then phoned Wilhelm to check if he was a member too. Wilhelm had quietly joined a few months earlier. At first he would not comment, but the journalist insisted that he would then write that Wilhelm was not a member, which was not true. The cat was out of the bag. Wilhelm went over to his parents to talk to them, but somehow they did not fully understand (or he did not make it clear) that he was also a member. So thinking that it was just me, they expressed their disapproval, but Wilhelm was relieved that it all turned out reasonably well.

The article appeared two days later. His parents would not take the journalist’s call, but of course bought the paper, which they otherwise never did. We had gone for the day to my parents, who by now were living in Gordon’s Bay. My parents did not agree with our decision to join the ANC, but felt that it was our choice to make. They had raised me and my sisters to be free-thinkers and to raise questions, and they knew I would not easily back down once I had carefully analysed an issue and decided on a position. Ultimately, they believed that family and personal relations were more important than any ideological position – a belief I share.

Early that afternoon we got a call, and just like a year earlier we were summoned to the Verwoerd house. We were told not to bring Wilmé. The reception was icy. This time I was included in the conversation, as was Wilhelm’s mother. Wilhelm’s father was furious. He raged for what seemed like hours. Although he largely ignored me, it was clear that he felt I had misled Wilhelm. He called us traitors to the Afrikaner nation and a shame on the family name. Wilhelm tried to reason with him, but he would not listen. Wilhelm’s father was the patriarch – not only of his own family, but also, as the eldest son, he was the guardian of the Verwoerd legacy. We were now a threat to that legacy, he insisted, and had no right to be in the fold any more. He told Wilhelm that, since he no longer regarded him as his son, we had no right to the surname any more. We would no longer be welcome in ‘his’ house, and were disinherited. Wilhelm’s mother, who was in tears, asked him what this meant in terms of the grandchildren. He was clearly a bit troubled by this and said that they were welcome as long as we were not with them.

Of course, this was a deeply distressing conversation, and over the next few days we tried repeatedly to talk to him, but nothing would help. Over the next ten years, Wilhelm’s father would shun us. We would quietly visit his mother when he was not home, or I would drop off the children, waiting in a nearby restaurant for the call to come for me to pick them up.

To add to the stress, the media, both in South Africa and around the world, had got hold of the story, and would not leave us alone. The phone was ringing non-stop. The ANC asked us to do as much media as we could, because it was great publicity for them. I do not think I quite understood the shock waves this episode sent through the anti-apartheid movement. It was only years later, when I overheard a fellow MP, Salie Manie, telling a us governor about me, that I got some sense of what our joining the ANC meant. Salie explained how the news spread and how so many of the ANC activists felt that if a grandson of Verwoerd could join, it was the ultimate validation of everything the ANC stood for.

So we did literally hundreds of interviews. This was exhausting and stressful – not helped by the fact that I was almost nine months pregnant, and still working and trying (unsuccessfully) to finish my Masters thesis before the baby arrived. With all the media coverage, which focused more on Wilhelm than on me, Wilhelm’s father decided to denounce us publicly. He did so in a letter to the big Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger, which was quickly picked up by some of the other Afrikaans publications.

Almost immediately, letters threatening to kill us were sent to our house. These were distressing but I could deal with them. What really disgusted me was that people would call our home phone and when Wilmé picked up, tell her that they were going to kill us. She was only two and a half and became distraught. After this happened a few times, I made sure that she could not get to the phone and eventually I changed our number. This helped for a while, but the new number got out and the threats started again.

I was now also not welcome in Stellenbosch any more. None of our friends would talk to us, and I was asked not to attend the mother-and-toddler groups. In town, people would hiss ‘traitor’ when they saw me, and I was frequently spat on. We got a call from a professor at the university to warn us that he had reliable information that we were on the hit-list of a far-right organisation. He told us that we were third on a list that included Chris Hani.

In the next year, we received information that the two above us on the list had been assassinated. The ANC offered us protection, but I knew that if anyone really wanted to kill us, nothing would stop them. I did not want the incredible invasion of privacy that protection would entail, with armed men in and around my house. Intelligence sources felt that the children were not at risk, so we decided against any security. We kept to this decision although I would later, during the election campaign, agree to security at public events, when the ANC felt there was a specific threat.

In the midst of this chaos, I gave birth to my beautiful son, Wian Brandt. At 36 weeks, he must have got a bit claustrophobic, according to the doctors, and miraculously flipped around into a breach position. The doctors decided to do an early Caesarean section, but for the week before his birth I would be suddenly breathless when he headbutted me. Despite his early, backwards entry into the world, he still tipped the scale at just under nine pounds. All went smoothly, apart from Wilmé, who got a peanut stuck up her nose the night I went into hospital. I again had an epidural. Wilhelm recorded Wian’s entry into the world on video camera with the help of an enthusiastic anaesthetist, who completely forgot about me while directing Wilhelm.

As was the practice with babies born by Caesarean section, Wian had to be ‘warmed up’ for a few hours in an incubator. The nurses reluctantly agreed that I could keep Wian in an incubator next to my bed in my room, as I had arranged with the paediatrician beforehand since I wanted to have as much contact with him as possible. Wian was restless and crying in the incubator. I eventually took him out and, knowing that he had to stay warm, I fed him and then covered him up completely under the duvet, before we both fell asleep. I woke up with panicked nurses, doctors and security men next to my bed. Someone had spotted the empty incubator, assumed that Wian had been stolen and set off a mad panic. When I lifted the duvet to reveal him peacefully sleeping, there was a sigh of relief. The nurses were not impressed with me, though.

Wilmé visited later that morning, and brought Wian a panda bear. For months she had been excited about Wian’s arrival and had spoken to him through my tummy. Every night, she repeated the same words in a little sing-song tone: ‘Hello, Wian. I’m Wilmé. I love you.’ When Wilmé arrived at the hospital, Wian was fast asleep, as only a newborn can be. I propped Wilmé up on the pillows and carefully placed the sleeping baby in her arms. She looked at Wian intently and then said, in the same sing-song tone: ‘Hello, Wian. I’m Wilmé. I love you.’ A split-second later, Wian’s eyes flew open and he stared at Wilmé, wide awake and alert. She was thrilled and I was in tears. They were – and remain – very close. From the start, Wilmé wanted to take on the parental role. Just before she left the hospital at the end of her first visit, I changed Wian’s nappy. She watched closely, and when Wian started squirming a bit, she gently pushed me aside.‘Excuse me, Mummy. I’ll do that,’ she said.

Wian was a more restless baby than Wilmé. He had colic and I had many sleepless nights. Of course, my political activities got the blame. Thank God for Emily, who would arrive in the morning and put Wian in a blanket on her back. Wian loved this and would quickly fall asleep. As he grew older, Emily would swing him onto her back, then throw the blanket over him and tie it tight in the front. And, Pavlov-like, he was often asleep before she’d tied the blanket.

In the meantime, I went back to work, and continued to attend ANC meetings. One comrade said afterwards: ‘You were at one meeting with a tummy and at the next meeting without a tummy. So we assumed the baby came in between?’

As with Wilmé, I was determined to breastfeed Wian exclusively until he was six months old. Since there were no cell phones yet, I got a pager, and Emily would page me when Wian needed to be fed. I hated expressing milk and fed him on demand, so I was dashing between work, breastfeeding and ANC meetings. It was exhausting.