It was stick fighting and herding her father's livestock during her childhood in the village of Mbhongweni in Bizana which may have prepared Struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela for a lifetime of opposition to oppression.
One of her surviving sisters told Independent Media this week that the former ANC Women’s League president used to go head-to-head with boys and stand her ground in the grazing fields.
Retired school principal Phangiwe Madikizela, who turns 82 today, said Madikizela-Mandela herded her father's livestock because her older siblings were away at school.
She said she looked after the livestock before and after school and on weekends.
Madikizela-Mandela was the third of Columbus Madikizela and MaRhadebe Mzaidume’s nine children.
Although Phangiwe is the same age as Madikizela-Mandela, she said her sister was senior because when she started school in 1943 she (Madikizela-Mandela) was already in Standard Three (Grade Five).
”I only found out much later that Sis’ Winnie was the same age as me,” she said.
This, she explained, was because Mbhongweni Primary School, founded by Madikizela-Mandela’s father, was just across the dirt road in front of her home.
”My home was far away from school so we had to walk kilometres to school. That’s why many of us started late,” said Phangiwe.
She described her sister as a champion stick fighter who also tutored other children in lower classes. She loved children.
Phangiwe lost track of Madikizela-Mandela after she enrolled at the Shawbury Native High School in Qumbu, about 170km from her hometown, and later moved to Johannesburg to study for a diploma in social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work.
In July, 1958, Phangiwe established Qadu Junior Secondary School as a teacher and principal.
She remembered Madikizela-Mandela’s wedding to Nelson Mandela on June 6, 1958, in Mbhongweni.
”I sang my heart out at their wedding,” Phangiwe smiled, describing the global icon as handsome.
She quickly added: “But my sister was even more beautiful.”
The wedding reception was held in Bizana and the then all-white town council denied them use of the town hall.
”ANC people took over the hall and openly told us to disrespect white people. As village girls we were scared to chant Mayibuye! iAfrika!” she explained.
Not long after the wedding party had left Mbhongweni and Bizana, the newlyweds’ political activism intensified and ultimately led to the jailing of Mandela and the constant harassment of his young wife.
Nomzekelo Juqula, 82, who in childhood was Madikizela-Mandela’s father's trusted courier, remembered her as an A-student who did not fear beating up boys.
”That’s why we did not understand how Mandela won her heart,” said Juqula.
Madikizela-Mandela was fearless, calling her male schoolmates makwedini (small boys) and they would retaliate by saying kwedini (tomboy), she said.
Madikizela-Mandela’s father was the principal of Mbhongweni Primary School when Juqula started her school in the 1940s.
”We were scared of him,” she said.
More than 75 years later, Juqula and Phangiwe have been left devastated by thedeath of their big sister.
Juqula said Madikizela-Mandela was her big sister because her father was senior to hers in the Ngutyana clan despite them being the same age.
Phangiwe accompanied Madikizela-Mandela when there was a ritual to end the mourning period in Qunu following Mandela’s death in 2013.
”It was very sad. We had hoped she would come back home so we could share memories,” she said.