Winnie Mandela (46 page)

Sibuniso Tshabalala's mother, Nomsa, testified that members of the MUFC came to her house in search of Sibuniso on the evening of 13 November, but he was not at home. When he returned, his family told him what had happened to Lolo Sono. He refused to go into hiding and went out on the morning of 15 November. Later that day, Sibuniso called his mother and said only that he was with Lolo. He was never seen again.

Lolo and Sibuniso's distraught parents reported the incident to Captain Potgieter at the Protea Police Station, who told them to report it to the Meadowlands police.

During rigorous questioning, Richardson admitted he had been an informer. Earlier in the hearing, police commissioner George Fivaz admitted under cross-examination that Richardson had been paid R10 000 in 1995 for ‘past services' and to ‘oil his hand' for cooperation in a fresh inquiry into the disappearance of Lolo Sono and Siboniso Tshabalala.

Richardson testified that Winnie had ordered him to kill Lolo and Sibusisu because they were informers. He also admitted killing Koekie Zwane, a young woman accused of being a police informer, in December 1988.

The TRC found that Sibuniso Tshabalala had been assaulted at Winnie's home, and was subsequently murdered by Richardson. Both Lolo and Sibuniso had been falsely accused of being informers, and of being responsible for the death of Tebogo Maluleke and Sipho Mbenenge at the house of Richardson, who had admitted to being the police informer.

The TRC also found that Winnie was involved in Lolo Sono's abduction and knew that he was held on her premises, and that she had to accept responsibility for the disappearance of Lolo and Sibuniso.

Pelo Mekgwe, Thabiso Mono, Kenny Kgase and Stompie Seipei

A commissioner asked the Reverend Frank Chikane whether the Mandela Crisis Committee had demanded to see the boys when they visited Winnie's home.

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘That was not part of our brief.'

Bishop Peter Storey rationalised that on the one hand they had attempted to find out the truth of Stompie's whereabouts and possibly save his life, and on the other hand there had been a political agenda, as the committee was involved in ‘damage control'. He said there had been a hostage situation at Winnie's home, and that she alone decided how and under what conditions the youths were to be released. She was aware of everything that happened in her house, he said.

Sydney Mufamadi, one of the members of the Mandela Crisis Committee, said that if the committee had forcefully removed the youths from Winnie's home, they could have been charged with kidnapping. He didn't explain who would have charged prominent clerics and community leaders with ‘kidnapping' injured children from a place where they were so obviously under threat.

In
Country of My Skull
, Antjie Krog said it became clear during the TRC hearings that the men who hadn't had the courage to stand up to Winnie in the past lacked it still.

Winnie denied any involvement in the abduction, assault and torture of the four youths, and said she had been unaware that they were being held against their will, having been told by Jerry Richardson and Xoliswa Falati that they were at her home voluntarily.

However, the TRC found that Jerry Richardson, John Morgan, Katiza Cebekhulu and Xoliswa Falati had abducted the four from the Methodist manse on Winnie's instructions. The TRC also found that Winnie was at home, and not in Brandfort as she had claimed during her trial, and had not only been present, but had initiated and taken part in the assaults. Furthermore, she had actively resisted repeated efforts by the Mandela Crisis Committee and other community leaders to secure the release of the youths held at her house.

Stompie Seipei

Winnie denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, the killing of Stompie on 1 January 1989. The TRC had to weigh three versions of the teenage activist's murder. Jerry Richardson claimed that he killed Stompie on Winnie's instructions. Former security policeman Paul Erasmus suggested that Richardson killed Stompie because he had found out that Richardson was an informer. Katiza Cebekhulu said he had seen Winnie stabbing Stompie. This was supported by John Morgan, who testified that he found Stompie in a pool of blood flowing from his neck, and had
been instructed to dump Stompie's body. According to an unsigned, typed statement allegedly made in police custody, Johannes ‘Themba' Mabotha – a Vlakplaas askari who had apparently defected and was frequently seen at Winnie's home – said he had been present at a meeting when Richardson told Winnie he had killed Stompie. He claimed Winnie had been shocked, and that she afterwards attempted to spread disinformation that Stompie was alive in a refugee camp in Botswana.

Richardson was brought from prison to testify at the TRC hearings. Following the abolition of the death penalty by the ANC government, his sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment and he had applied for amnesty for four murders, including Stompie's. He described graphically how Stompie was beaten, and then killed. The things they did as the Mandela United Football Club were horrible and barbaric, Richardson said, and they tortured youths in the same way that the police used to torture freedom fighters. While they were interrogating Stompie, they found a wristwatch in his pocket, and in the absence of a satisfactory explanation, this was taken as proof that he was an informer. He was thrown into the air and allowed to fall to the ground, and punched and kicked. Richardson said Winnie was watching them. The assault went on for about two hours and Winnie joined in, with her fists and a whip. Eventually, Stompie admitted to having supplied information about four guerrillas to the police in Parys, his hometown in the Free State, and pleaded for mercy. Richardson said he had been tortured so severely that it became apparent he would die. The next morning, Richardson reported to Winnie that Stompie was in very bad shape, and as he would die anyway, his opinion was that the youth should be finished off. However, they left him lying in the outside room, and that evening two members of the football club, Guybon Khubeka and one Sonwabo, again assaulted Stompie. The decision to kill Stompie was taken the next day but not carried out immediately, because members of the Mandela Crisis Committee arrived at the house. That evening, Richardson and Skhumbozo Mtshali dragged Stompie to Noordgesig, and stabbed him to death with a pair of garden shears.

‘Mami did not kill Stompie,' Richardson said. ‘I killed Stompie in accordance with Mami's instructions. She never killed anyone, but instructed us to kill people.'

Xoliswa Falati testified that she had gone to prison for Winnie. She said Winnie became aggressive when she drank ‘hard' liquor. Asked why she had protected Winnie and gave false evidence in court about the killing of Stompie, Falati said it was part of their culture to protect their leaders. And, she said, she was scared, having seen how people were brutally beaten.

In the light of the corroborating testimony that placed Winnie on the scene and implicated her in the assault, the TRC found that she was probably aware of Stompie's condition and had failed to take responsibility for arranging medical treatment for him, compounding her own complicity. Her public statements about Stompie and the rumours that he was in Botswana were an attempt to divert
attention from herself. She had been negligent in failing to take the necessary action to avert Stompie's death, the TRC found.

Lerotodi Ikaneng

Lerotodi Ikaneng and Gift Ntombeni, former members of the MUFC, testified that Winnie had assaulted them and accused them of being informers approximately six weeks before the attempt on Ikaneng's life on 3 January 1989. Ikaneng had made a statement to the police regarding the involvement of Sizwe Sithole, Zindzi's boyfriend, in the killing of Thole Dlamini, which made him a target for the MUFC. It was therefore ‘most probable' that Ikaneng's life was at risk from the MUFC and, in this particular case, from the MUFC's patrons, Winnie and Zindzi. Ikaneng alleged that Zindzi had accused him of being an informer, probably because she was upset that he had implicated her boyfriend. According to Ikaneng, Zindzi had accused him and several other MUFC members of being ‘sell-outs' when he was still a member of the club. Jerry Richardson confirmed that he had led the attack on Ikaneng, accompanied by other MUFC members and the three abducted youths Mono, Mekgwe and Kgase, and claimed that Winnie had congratulated him when he told her he had killed Ikaneng.

The TRC found that there was no apparent motive for Ikaneng to falsely implicate Winnie in the attempts on his life. Although Winnie denied any knowledge of the attack on Ikaneng, the TRC found that she was both involved in, and responsible for, the attempt to kill him.

Dr Abu-Baker Asvat

Albertina Sisulu testified that she knew nothing about a visit to Dr Asvat by Katiza Cebekhulu on 30 December 1988, the day Stompie Seipei was assaulted. However, Cebekhulu's patient card showed that he did visit the surgery on that day, and in a BBC documentary on Asvat's death, made at the beginning of 1997, Albertina confirmed that the entry on the card was in her handwriting. In testimony before the TRC, she denied that it was her handwriting, and it was subsequently proved that it was not, in fact, her handwriting. She said she did not believe that Winnie was guilty of involvement in Asvat's murder, and denied previous evidence that Winnie had a heated argument with Asvat just hours before he was killed.

A former member of the MUFC, Thulani Nicholas Dlamini, claimed that he murdered Asvat on Winnie's instructions. His accomplice, Zakhele Cyril Mbatha, who, like Dlamini, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, also testified that he had shot Asvat on Winnie's instructions. He said she had offered him and Dlamini R20 000 to kill Dr Asvat.

Neither Dlamini nor Mbatha, who actually shot Asvat, provided the TRC with credible testimony or coherent reasons for the contradictions in their various
versions of events, and as a result the TRC could not reach a conclusion regarding Winnie's alleged involvement in Asvat's murder.

Themba Mabotha

Following his arrest by members of the Soweto Security Branch, Mabotha was detained for a period of eight months, from April to October 1988. According to Captain Jan Potgieter, Mabotha was to have been produced as a state witness against Winnie in a pending treason trial for which Potgieter had been conducting investigations for more than two years. He testified that the failure of the Witwatersrand Attorney-General to make a decision regarding this prosecution had left him in a dilemma, as he was unable to extend Mabotha's detention. He wanted him to be available should a subsequent decision be made to prosecute Winnie, and requested Colonel Eugene de Kock to keep him at Vlakplaas, claiming that, at the time, he had no idea that Vlakplaas was the home of the police hit squads. De Kock testified that Potgieter had implied Mabotha was to be killed. He said he and Potgieter had worked together in the police counter-insurgency unit, Koevoet, in South West Africa and ‘understood each other well'. Although he did not receive a direct order to kill Mabotha, Potgieter's intentions were clear, and therefore Mabotha was executed, said De Kock.

Katiza Cebekhulu

Katiza had been a member of the Mandela United Football Club and had been charged, with Winnie and six other people, for the kidnapping of Kgase, Mono and Mekgwe, and the murder of Stompie Seipei, but had disappeared before the trial, saying afterwards that he had been whisked out of the country by the ANC.

Katiza claimed he had seen Winnie twice stabbing a body lying next to the jacuzzi, which he believed was Stompie. He also testified that he had seen her savagely whipping Lolo Sono with a sjambok in her garage before he disappeared. He confirmed evidence given by Lolo's father, Nicodemus, that Winnie had arrived at their house with a badly beaten Lolo, claiming he was a police spy. Katiza said he was in the vehicle and heard Nicodemus pleading with Winnie to leave Lolo with him, and that she had said the movement would deal with him. They returned to Winnie's house, Katiza got out of the minibus and Winnie and the others drove away, Lolo Sono never to be seen again.

Katiza admitted taking part in the assault on Stompie, and said he saw Winnie stabbing the boy. He went to his bedroom, and when he enquired about Stompie the next day, he was told that Jerry Richardson had taken Stompie away the previous night. He never saw Stompie again.

Katiza said in 1991, during the trial, that Winnie had threatened that unless he went into exile in Swaziland, she would do with him as she pleased. He said she
promised that if he went to Swaziland, she would help him further his education and give him money. He agreed because he was scared, and the ANC took him to Mozambique and Angola and then to Zambia, where he was jailed for two years and eight months. Baroness Emma Nicholson heard about his plight and secured his release through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Winnie denied any knowledge of Katiza's flight from South Africa.

The TRC found that Katiza had been taken out of the country and placed illegally in a Zambian prison for almost three years at the request of the ANC and with the connivance of the Zambian authorities. Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda admitted that the ANC had requested his assistance with Cebekhulu. The TRC said it was likely that this had been done to protect Winnie from disclosures Katiza might make, and avoid embarrassment for the ANC. The ANC never admitted responsibility for its actions in the matter. Winnie's claim that she had not been directly involved was contradicted by the testimony of both John Morgan and Cebekhulu, and her argument that she had nothing to gain from Cebekhulu's incarceration was not credible, as her interests would appear to be the reason he was taken out of the country.

 

On the last day of the hearings, Winnie testified. The media had repeatedly highlighted the fact that, since she was not applying for amnesty, it was not incumbent on her to tell the truth. However, her refusal to seek amnesty also meant that the Attorney-General was free to review her testimony and, irrespective of the TRC's findings, bring criminal charges against her, if there were sufficient grounds for such action.