The legacy of the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela reverberates throughout Brandfort, especially among the children of the poor whose tertiary studies she helped fund.
Mbatu Bosman, who was born and bred in Majwemasweu, would not have gone to university had it not been for the Struggle icon who died in March.
Having first trained as a teacher, Bosman is now a priest at the Methodist Church in Thabong, Welkom.
He finished school in the Brandfort township, which had classes only up to Form 1 (Grade 8) and then went to Vulamasango High School in Bloemfontein, where he completed matric in 1984.
He vividly remembered setting foot inside Winnie’s Brandfort house “for the first time after matric between December 1984 and January 1985”. He had passed matric with exemption and “we got a message to go and see her”.
Only one of the three young men who went to the house took up Winnie’s offer of help to study at university.
Bosman was not ready to go as “the year I passed matric we were blessed with twins”. He adds: “My parents were not working. I had children to look after.”
But it’s another young man’s story of decline that is telling about the sad reality of Brandfort at the time. Ben Mabaso, who rose to become the local mayor, could not take Winnie’s offer of financial help as his parents wanted nothing to do with the “communist” woman the police had warned the community against.
Mabaso was going to study overseas. Bosman then worked for the local municipality from 1985 to 1987, but while on transfer to neighbouring Odendaalsrus “I realised I was going nowhere. Around November, I resigned”.
With no prospects, he just left his employ. “I had applied to Fort Hare University. It was a leap of faith. I called Mrs Moahloli and told her I was ready to study.”
Nomafa Norah Moahloli is Winnie’s friend in Brandfort who defied the apartheid authorities by welcoming the political activist when she was banished there in 1977.
But, said Bosman, in 1988 when he was ready to go to university, Winnie had left Brandfort. “Mrs Moahloli made contact with Winnie, who said I should come to Soweto. I arrived on a Thursday and went to see her on Friday. On Monday there were going to be interviews at the German embassy.”
Bosman never got to the interviews; he was picked up by the Special Branch as he was about to catch a taxi to the 9am interview. “A kombi full of white men came for me. I was handcuffed.”
At Protea police station, he was threatened with electrocution. “They wanted to know how I knew Winnie.”
When the police could not get what they wanted from him, they released him, but it was 4pm. He had missed the crucial interview.
In hindsight, he realised the telephone calls from Brandfort to Winnie in Soweto had been intercepted.
“They dropped me off on a corner, not at my uncle’s in Diepkloof where they picked me up that morning. A black man drove. He told me they were planning to kill me.
“I went to the house and related my story, then took a taxi to Winnie’s house to tell her why I missed the interview. The same week I was due to go to Fort Hare for orientation.”
Winnie wrote a letter and made arrangements for him to go to the university, but, alas, the letterhead had Nelson Mandela’s picture on it.
The letter state that the German embassy was going to pay for Bosman’s tuition and he took it to Fort Hare. “Mr Lamprecht was a verkrampte vice chancellor and when I showed him the letter, everything changed. He saw the Mandela picture and ordered me off campus. He said it was not from the German embassy, it was Winnie. I went back to Brandfort and told Mrs Moahloli the story.
“Winnie arranged for the German embassy to write the letter to Fort Hare and told me to go back there.”
He enrolled for a degree in pedagogy, completing it in a record four years.
Bosman said he was called to ministry while studying to be a teacher at Fort Hare, but he finished the course and went to teach at his alma mater in Bloemfontein, Vulamasango.
“From 1993 to 1996, I was a teacher. In 1996, I resigned to offer for ministry. The call was too strong. I started my journey in 1997.”
It took him two years to complete a theology degree at Rhodes University, thanks to credits from his teaching degree. As a Methodist priest, he was based in Tsakane, Brakpan, from 2000 to 2008.
He remembered Winnie fondly, the woman “who gave me a lease on life”.
Growing up, he saw her from a distance. “I was 13 years old in 1977,” he recalled. In the evenings he would join the toyi-toyi outside Winnie’s house. “We ran the gauntlet of the baton-wielding police.”
Once in a while, Winnie would favour the singing crowds with a sighting, “coming out with a clenched fist to give us the Black Power salute”. The police would be keeping watch from a koppie.
Bosman said his older brothers were politically awake. Vakele, who has died, used to run errands for Winnie in Bloemfontein as she could not go herself.
Another brother, Thamsanqa, a retired nurse, smuggled letters for Winnie to Pretoria. “Without Winnie I wouldn’t have got anywhere. I paid nothing for university. My parents only paid for the transport.”
“Winnie sacrificed for me. I got the bursary even without going to the interview. I’m eternally grateful for what she did for me. Not just me, she helped bury the loved ones of families who could not afford the funeral costs.”
He is continuing Winnie’s legacy of helping others: “She gave me a lease on life. I have to do the same for others.”