Carol’s Column

My private insights into Winnie and Anneline

You know, nothing is exactly what it seems. The past two weeks have been a time of celebrity marriages, both the dissolution and the forging of.

Typically, everyone is charmingly articulate. "She's a money-grabbing, power-drunk and loud-mouthed and deserves her comeuppance."

This is a view among many - dare I say most - circles, of the woman whose marriage to the president was dissolved the week before last.

"She's as tough as steel and this time her rich husband is an [WORD ILLEGIBLE IN PHOTOGRAPH]."

This is a commonly expressed view about the woman who, last week, got married for the third time, and once again to a rich and powerful man.

Naturally, we're judgmental, a very human instinct. But perhaps things are not all they appear.

Many years ago, I entered a children's clothing store in Sandton and was soon lost among a forest of iridescent dresses for small girls.

Through the tightly packed rails, I heard a mother speaking to her children. Their names? Brandon and Chantal.

They were young, I could hear them giggling and chattering non-stop, as any good little people often do. But it was the mother who impressed me. She was gentle, kind, thoughtful, loving and infinitely patient. When I peered through the clothes, I saw a skinny untidy blonde with two small kids. Unconscious of me, she affectionately hugged them. It was a totally private little scene. What a happy little family unit, I thought.

A few weeks later, I attended the launch of Anneline Kriel's new record, something about "Take off my boots, or put them on", I forget. The over-painted, dressed-for-stardom, leggy young woman dancing about in boots was the young mother I'd seen through the clothes. I hadn't recognised her. Without makeup, in jeans and T-shirt, Anneline looked totally different.

Of course, Brandon and Chantal were not her children, they were her first husband Sol Kerzner's from his second wife Shirley, who had recently died.

That's the private cameo I have of Anneline Kriel. A caring, loving young woman. I wish her happiness with Peter Bacon, she deserves it. Sometime in the '60s, I met Winnie Mandela for the first time.

She was so beautiful that I remember catching my breath. Warm and friendly, she spoke with passion and dignity. Over the years, I watched her defy the Government, as did so many South African women. But she seemed more visible - because of Nelson, because she was young and lovely, because the regime of the time was relentlessly brutal towards her.

In Brandfort, to which she was banished, and where she was constantly harassed by the authorities, she defied in every gesture, refusing to enter shops through entrances marked "non-whites", later ignoring her restrictions, returning to Soweto to resume a life with her daughters that could never be normal. Then came her fall from grace.

One day, I interviewed Helen Joseph. She was elderly and ill, but what a remarkable woman she was. So fine. How I imagine Mother Teresa to be, how I know Albertina Sisulu and Helen Suzman are.

It was a privilege spending time with her. And then Winnie Mandela was mentioned.

Helen Joseph's face lit up. "Despite what people say, Winnie is a good person," she said quietly. "She is a woman of true worth."

For me, these words came from a woman of such true worth that I was moved.

And that is the private cameo I have of Winnie Mandela. I wish her happiness. I think she deserves it.

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