Winnie Mandela Arrested for Trying to Return Home

Police today pulled over black activist Winnie Mandela’s car and arrested her for the second time in eight days, whisking her off into custody as she tried to return to her Johannesburg home in defiance of a state order expelling her from the city.

A squad of six security police cars raced alongside Mandela’s car and forced it to the side of the road as it entered the city limits from Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts Airport.

Mandela, accompanied by her daughter, Zinzi, and two grandchildren, arrived from Cape Town where she had been visiting her husband, jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela.

She met for 45 minutes in the airport terminal building with her lawyers, who had conferred through the morning with officials of the state attorney’s office negotiating whether she would be arrested, and before leaving said: “I am going home. My home is in Soweto.”

Expulsion Order

Mandela, under an 8-year-old expulsion order, has been banned from Soweto, a huge black township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and ordered to live in the remote rural township of Brandfort. She has filed suit, to be heard Jan. 7 in the Supreme Court, to have the banning order quashed on the ground that it is unreasonable.

One of the policemen who halted the car on the edge of a four-lane highway soon after Mandela had left from the airport, leaned into the car and said: “You are under arrest. I’m sorry, you must come with me.”

She refused to budge, and after a few minutes a policewoman opened a car door and tried to pull out Mandela’s 2-year-old grandson, Zondwa.

Mandela, 50, then emerged, pushing back policemen and screaming at one: “Don’t touch me with those hands. I don’t know that you haven’t got AIDS.”

Hugged Family

In the midst of the melee, Mandela turned and hugged Zinzi, her grandchildren and her driver, Aubrey Mokoena, and got into the police car.

Officers at the scene said she was being taken to Krugersdorp police station, 30 miles west of Johannesburg. She is to appear in court Tuesday.