Nelson was locked up on Robben Island, and wives like me had been warned we would bring our husbands home as corpses from that place. But I always believed he would be released. It was my duty to have a home ready for us.
I am not the sort of person to carry beautiful flowers and be an ornament to everyone.
When I was born, my mother was very disappointed. She wanted a son. I knew that from a very early age. So I was a tomboy.
I'm like thousands of women in South Africa who lost their men to cities and prisons... I stand defiant, tall and strong.
It dawned on me then that you either had to survive apartheid, or you had to perish with it. And I decided to survive.
One of the greatest things I fear is letting down my people. I wouldn't live with that type of conscience, of having let down my people after they've been brutalized for so long.
The brutality of apartheid drains you of that emotion of fear if you have gone through everything you can be put through in the process of harassment.
I don't want a grand villa in a rich suburb alongside white people where many of my former comrades choose to live. I would never betray my roots in that way.
I have a good relationship with Mandela. But I am not Mandela's product. I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.
I knew what it is to hate.
I wanted to be a doctor at some point, and I was always bringing home strays from school: people who were too poor to pay fees or have food. My parents never rebuked me or told me that they were hard-pressed, too.
This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family.
The ANC has failed to address the problems of the black majority quickly enough.
The life of the President's First Lady would not have been for me. And I don't know how I would have been as a housewife.
They think because they have put my husband on an island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become.
I don't say we should have performed miracles, but surely there ought to have been a difference between the apartheid regime and governance of the ANC after 17 years.
It would be a most despicable thing to suggest I would exploit the poor for my own personal gain.
The solution of this country's problems lies in black hands.
I often wonder why I attract so much criticism.
I was so hooked by the fight for freedom that nothing mattered to us so long as we fulfilled the dream of years and years of our people being liberated. I thought normal life would come the day after.
