Waiting and watching

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The Cry of Winnie Mandela
Njabulo S. Ndebele
2004
Ayebia Publishing, Oxford and David Philip (2003), Cape Town
123 pages

Reviewed by Lara Scott

There is a trend at the moment in South Africa towards wanting to be like everyone else, as if some people don’t want the place described as unusual anymore. The mutterings go something like, it is better to understand this as another example of a mad warped power that fuelled a petty and cruel system of injustice and was finally beaten, rather than a too specific experience that can eventually only refer back to itself. There is a sense that protecting its uniqueness deflates it, detracts from its relevance as a story recognisable the globe over.

The argument is strange and vague, but understandable, as stories that have resonance are based on universal themes, ones that anyone, anywhere can relate to. With this new book, Njabulo Ndebele manages to describe circumstances that are South African absolutely and only, from the angle of the emotional world of people struggling with the eternal issues of love, hope and longing. His honest and raw portrayal of the apartheid state’s influence over everyday life is a lyrical exploration of ever-present human problems, framed by a unique social and political setting, and he gets the balance beautifully right.

In this way his book arrives just when it should. A soupçon of praise poem, meditation, soliloquy and dialogue, four fictional biographies combine to discuss the notion of waiting, as suffered by thousands of South African women whose partners were away in exile, in jail, in mines, for years, sometimes entire lifetimes. Four women meet and talk about their experiences, each one very different, but similar in their sadness and longing. The character he calls on at the beginning to use as their yardstick is Penelope, from the Greek myth, the woman obliged to wait and suffer through 19 years of not knowing where her lover was, finally to be condemned by a society eagle-eyed for any sign of misbehaviour in her husband’s absence (you know the story, it wasn’t covered in the recent Troy which followed Ulysses off to battle, but remember she was the one left behind).

Out of the four waiting scenarios, the saddest belongs to Mamello Molete, whose husband, her childhood sweetheart, disappears one night without a word or trace. They go through the grim process of searching "hospitals, morgues, police stations, as you did in eighties’ South Africa". A year later (a year of silence

"Mamello waits half a human lifespan for his return, but when it finally happens, it is a surreal and unbearably painful letdown"

), he phones from Cuba, to say he’s in exile, fearful of the repercussions for his political action, something his wife had known absolutely nothing about. While tragic, while forced, immediately there is a sense of something ‘not quite right’, as much as such things could be right in such a warped society. However, Mamello waits half a human lifespan for his return, but when it finally happens, it is a surreal and unbearably painful letdown. He returns, but rather than going home, he stays away, makes no contact. Mamello only hears about where he is through newspapers, radio reports. Finally she sees her lauded returned-exile husband on TV with his new partner. She watches the interview to the end, unable to stop herself, and she is not mentioned once.

What Ndebele does with these stories is challenge the accepted notion that political action always took priority, that relationships and personal life was seconded to whatever needed to be done for the liberation process. His characters grow to accept that things are more complicated, that often a political position can be used as an excuse, as when a husband that is forced to disappear can decide not to come back, simply because he doesn’t want to. Or in a different example, how a rural man that heads off to Johannesburg to work on the mines can lose all sense of home and family obligation, in a slow process of alienation and denial. Apartheid made me do it, sweetheart.

Ndebele explores these contradictions beautifully, and it’s partly due to what he doesn’t do: he doesn’t resolve much, he doesn’t console, he doesn’t romanticise the solace of sisters in mutual need, or condemn the men who left or even the state that forced them out the door in the first place. Those are the no-nos, which free up his poetic voice to slowly unravel the complexities of coming and going. Everything is tentative, there is no simple finger-pointing resolution for the people whose life course is decided by an ugly political force, but who grow to admit the role of human agency, and in the end, even find some solace in that. Freedom, his characters decide, is possibly only the end of waiting, which in turn is a restriction and blanketing of life-force, a period when everything is future-oriented and nothing can begin or end. Ndebele claims freedom as action is the strength to abandon this state of waiting. The frustration he describes becomes commonplace for these women living perpetually in the meantime, their sense of self and family based on a future that they have to believe in, however unsure, however tormenting the wait is.

Ndebele’s characters describes madness as an awareness of a wasted past and a fantasy future, or living for something absent. Mamello adds, ’insanity is an intensity of consciousness of one’s own mental and emotional anguish’, brought on in her case by realising she has lost the love she waited for. If the society is itself not healthy, then to be normal is in effect to be sick. The one who will not adapt is healthier than one who is adapted to be ‘fine, but insane’, as she describes herself. Functioning, but not really. Each women’s sadness is a reflection of the political structure, also crazy-mad while maintaining a stubborn resistant to cracking.

Winnie Mandela enters as a discussion topic and game for the four women who talk about her almost as a case-study, as a playful comparison to themselves. She is an example of a woman who waited in public, and even more than that, she is an ambivalent figure who famously shunned Nelson Mandela on return from his long years of imprisonment, making him sleep alone on his first night out. We are reminded of her power once again through this, the one character that doesn’t simply wait to be reunited, but instead forsakes her husband. Ndebele compares this with the more typical, behind closed doors pain of the other women, but while Winnie is the one who chose to act independently, she was also the one criticised by a watchful society who wanted to see her wait. His comparison with Penelope reminds us that it is the ever watchful eyes of the community who won’t allow the women to change or adjust, they simply have to sit "with their legs stretched out in front of them", and let their patience be a reflection of the sacrifices their husbands are assumed to be making. The strong woman behind the man, or in this case, left behind.

Ndebele’s work tells an utterly unique story, the story of a society shattered by cruel, powerfully coercive political forces which damaged people in a very specific way. In exploring this, he describes human desire and longing and loss and survival and love like anyone would understand and be able to relate to. Maybe the more specifically located the story is, the closer you can get to the emotional fall-out which is part of it. Ndebele pulled one string and it all came out, letting the most painful aspects of personal life under apartheid rule tell a universal story. This one is about the limbo state of waiting for life to begin, hoping only for the chance to validate the past and thus enter the future with conviction. It is a story beautifully told, and told for the South African women who believed in and waited for change, for their husbands to come home, their families to begin again and life to resume.

Lara Scott works for publishing companies in Cape Town.