News reports suggest that investigations into the fate of
certain young men linked to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela may be re-opened. There
is a great deal of published evidence of her complicity in gross human rights
violations. Since the mid-1980s the gap between the public appearance of this
lady and her household, personal behaviour has been huge. A thorough
examination of this record is long over due.
With Nelson Mandela in prison and other leaders in exile,
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela assumed, according to her biographer, Emma Gilbey
(1993), that the leadership role was automatically hers: ‘I was ready to
deputise for Nelson', she allegedly wrote. In her semi-official role as wife of
the ANC leader, and as her reputation as an opponent of apartheid spread, she
became regarded internationally as de facto First Lady, as her association with
Danielle Mitterand of France and Lisbeth Palme of Sweden suggested.
In 1986, with her return to Soweto from harsh banishment
conditions in Brandfort in the Free State, she acted as an associate of MK,
supposedly providing assistance to cadres entering the country, and appearing
publicly in military uniform. Trewhela (2009) noted the 'extraordinary status'
she acquired 'as oracle to the unseen leader on Robben Island.' But in Soweto
in the late 1980s, her circle's main activity was crime and her followers were
chiefly homeless children.
Perhaps with the financial assistance of international
anti-apartheid agencies, she built a 15-room mansion in Orlando West (aka
‘Winnie's Palace'). In 1986-87 this became home to the Mandela United Football
Club (MUFC), which she founded. Fear and intimidation radiated from this gang
and their creator. On 28 July 1988, the house was burnt down by high school
pupils, while residents watched in silence. But intimidation continued inside
and outside her new residence in Diepkloof.
According to Gift Ntombeni, a follower, gang members manned
her gates at all times, recording complaints and hunting down culprits. Her
house was known as ‘Parliament' and a shack where abducted boys were kept was
called ‘Lusaka'. The terrorism reached a pitch when the fate of four youths,
Lolo Sono, Stompei Seipei, Pelo Mekgwe and Thabiso Mono, acquired notoriety in
early 1989.
Dr Abu-Baker Asvat was shot dead in his surgery on 27 January
and soon after the body of Seipei was identified. (Seipei was aged around 13 at
this time, and two years earlier had been the country's youngest detainee: he
was self-taught and could recite the Freedom Charter in its entirety.) These
killings were flagrant and probably interconnected. Asvat had been summoned to
examine the boy on 1 January, after he had undergone a prolonged period of
‘Break Down' in Madikizela-Mandela and the MUFC's hands - the victim was
repeatedly thrown into the air and allowed to fall to the floor - and the
physician pronounced him brain damaged and in dire need of hospitalisation.
Madikizela-Mandela and her accomplices did not act on this advice.
With the police barely active, the leadership of the
democracy movement spoke out on 16 February; it was the prime example of the
UDF's unflinching criticism of elites. Flanked by COSATU president, Elijah
Barayi, and by UDF co-president Richard Gumede, Murphy Morobe of the UDF-MDM
read a public statement directly linking Madikizela-Mandela to Seipei's
killing, and affirmed that the football team and "the reign of
terror" which it carried out was "her creation."
He went on: "We are outraged...and not prepared to
remain silent when those who are violating human rights claim to be doing so in
the name of the struggle." The MDM therefore "distance[d] itself from
Mrs Mandela and her actions" (Good, 2002).
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission held a Special
Investigation into the MUFC, restricted to a seven-month period between August
1988 and the end of February 1989. They found that ‘the residents and
associates of the Mandela household, including Ms Madikizela-Mandela herself,
were implicated directly or indirectly in...assaults and abduction, and the
murder and attempted murder of at least a dozen individuals.' The
investigations involved public hearings in late 1998, which included testimony
from Morobe, Azhar Cachalia and Madikizela-Mandela (Final Report, 1998).
Among the assaults were the following. The torture and
mutilation of Peter Makhanda and Phillip Makhanda; on 26 May 1987, the brothers
were taken by force to the back rooms of the Mandela home, where they were
assaulted and had ANC slogans carved into their bodies by MUFC members, the
wounds exacerbated with battery acid.
Ms Phumlile Dlamini was assaulted by Madikizela-Mandela and
MUFC members in late 1988. The TRC determined that she was taken from her house
on more than one occasion and that ‘in all probability' Madikizela-Mandela and
her followers were responsible for the assaults.
The abduction and killing of Lolo Sono and Anthony
Tshabalala: Nicodemus Sono, the father of Lolo, testified that on 13 November
1988, Madikizela-Mandela and her driver came to his house, and he saw Lolo
sitting in the back of her vehicle, his face swollen and bruised.
Madikizela-Mandela told him that Lolo was a police spy, and that an MK cadre
had been killed because of him. Despite Sono's pleas for his son's release,
Madikizela-Mandela declared: ‘I am taking this dog away. The movement will see
what to do with him.'
The Commission found that Lolo Sono was severely assaulted
at the Diepkloof residence with the knowledge of Madikizela-Mandela. They found
that he was killed by Jerry Richardson, her close confidant. Sibuniso
Tshabalala's fate was ‘linked to that of Lolo Sono', assaulted at the same
place and murdered by Richardson. The allegations regarding both men ‘were
unfounded and false.' Jerry Richardson himself ‘was a police informer.'
Ms Koekie Zwane was the girlfriend of an MUFC member, and
she died of multiple stab wounds on 18 December 1988. She too was an alleged
informer, and was murdered by Richardson. The latter applied to the TRC for
amnesty and stated that Zwane was killed on Madikizela-Mandela's instructions.
Madikizela-Mandela in turn denied ‘any knowledge of or involvement in this
incident.'
The Commission also found that four youths, Thabiso Mono,
Pelo Mekgwe, Kenneth Kgase, and Stompie Seipei were abducted from the Methodist
manse in Soweto on 29 December 1988 by Richardson and other followers on the
instructions of Madikizela-Mandela. The boys were accused by her of engaging in
sexual relations with the Rev Paul Verryn, who ran the manse, and Seipei was
singled out as an alleged informer. All four were assaulted in Diepkloof, and
Madikizela-Mandela ‘initiated and participated in the assaults' according to
the TRC's Final Report, while Seipei was ‘last seen alive' at her residence.
The killing of Dr Asvat on 27 January 1989 and the assault
on Seipei appear to be inter-related. Evidence exists that shortly before the
latter's death, Asvat, known as ‘the people's doctor', told Madikizela-Mandela:
‘This boy is seriously ill...You must take him to hospital.' Asvat also
vehemently refused to provide her with confirmation that an abducted youth had
been sodomised.
Asvat was shot dead in his surgery by Zakhele Mbatha
assisted by Thulani Dlamini without robbery occurring. Both men told the TRC in
considerable detail that they were promised R20,000 by Madikizela-Mandela for
the murder.
Ebrahim Asvat, brother to the slain doctor, also told the
Commission that the written statement of the two killers (eventually sentenced
to 30 years jail) implicating Madikizela-Mandela was never produced in court,
and that the police were unwilling to pursue the matter.
The TRC said that Madikizela-Mandela had ‘deliberately and
maliciously slandered Verryn' in an attempt to divert attention away from
herself. But they too seemed reluctant to take matters further. They raised
questions over the credibility of Mbatha and Dlamini's testimony. They found
that the death of Asvat and the linking of his death with the sexual abuse
allegations ‘raised serious concerns which the Commission was unable to
unravel.' They appeared to pin the blame on the police; the detectives investigating
Asvat's murder were ‘hasty' in their assumptions and ‘negligent' in their
subsequent work (Good, 2002 and Final Report).
But of greater importance were the lies and evasions of the
woman concerned and how she was consistently supported in these endeavours by
senior-most persons in the ANC. Katiza Cebekhulu was a participant and material
witness in the events concerning Asvat, and he was, in the findings of the
Commission, ‘taken out of the country and placed illegally in a Zambian prison
at the request of the ANC'.
They note that President Kenneth Kaunda had ‘admitted that
the ANC requested his assistance with Cebekhulu.' Madikizela-Mandela was
‘involved in at least the initial hand-over' of the man, who was then held for
three years without trial (Final Report).
Aubrey Mokoena was once prominent in the UDF, and by 1997 an
ANC MP and parliamentary committee chair. He had accepted Madikizela-Mandela's
lies about the four abducted youth, and told the TRC that in 1989 ‘Mama' had
been so overcome by the ‘altruism' of a social worker that she had mistakenly
associated with thugs.
The Rev. Frank Chikane had been a member of the ineffectual
Crisis Committee which Nelson Mandela set up to contain the scandal, and in
1997 was deputy head of the Deputy-President's Office; he too liked to refer to
Madikizela-Mandela as ‘Mama,' and acted evasively before the TRC.
Cyril Ramaphosa had also been a member of the Crisis
Committee, but repeatedly declined to offer his testimony to the TRC. Before
the public hearings began on 18 November 1997, Dullah Omar, Minister of
Justice, voiced his support in the terms which Madikizela-Mandela was herself
inclined to use, that the struggle exonerated everything: murder charges
against her were not comparable to the atrocities of the former minority
government, and they had to be seen in the context of apartheid (Final Report
and Good 2002).
The views and actions of Morobe and Cachalia were totally
different. Appearing before the TRC in November 1997, they recalled the situation
a decade earlier, when they were acutely aware that Madikizela-Mandela's
victims were chiefly weak and vulnerable boys and girls, and that the UDF had
campaigned for the release of children from government detention. Stompie
Seipei's body had been discovered, and "community anger was at boiling
point", Cachalia said. As national leadership of the UDF we knew we had to
do something bold and imaginative. The public statement of 16 February 1989,
Morobe admitted, had a profound effect on him. "[But] this was an issue of
principle that my organisation had to confront." A part of me, he said,
now wants to forget the nightmare; "but another part says we cannot go
forward until there's some accountability." Cachalia recommended that
anyone found guilty by the TRC of gross human rights violations should be
debarred from holding public office thereafter; the penalty of lustration (Good
2002).
But the evasions continued, and over four days of hearings
Madikizela-Mandela could watch, on the summary of Krog (1998), powerful men
‘bend over backwards to avoid saying anything bad about her.' Tutu went further
and added his own and the Commission's prestige to a gratuitous endorsement of
her claims.
It was as if Morobe and Cachalia and the relatives of her
victims had not spoken. The TRC had attributed at least 12 killings to her and
the MUFC, Trewhela in 2009 estimated 16 and David Beresford had listed some 14
actual and attempted murders. Despite this, at the hearings in December 1997,
Tutu told Madikizela-Mandela "Many, many love you. Many, many say you
should have been where you ought to be. The First Lady of the country...I love
you very deeply...You are a great person" (His emphasis, Good 2002).
But the Commission's findings were nonetheless reasonably
clear: ‘Those who opposed Madikizela-Mandela and the MUFC or dissented from
them were branded as informers, then hunted down and killed.' She was
‘politically and morally accountable' for gross violations of human rights.
Their conclusions on the role of the ANC were muted and repeatedly qualified.
It ‘must bear some responsibility', they said, ‘for not
taking a more determined stance regarding the controversy surrounding Ms
Madikizela-Mandela, particularly in the period following the unbanning of the
organisation. The apparent complicity of elements within the ANC to obstruct
the course of justice by removing witnesses and co-accused...is a case in
point' (Final Report).
But the TRC ruled out Cachalia's specific recommendation of
lustration, on the grounds that ‘it would be inappropriate in the South African
context.' It offered no explanation for this conclusion. The Skweyiya
Commission of Inquiry, however, had earlier reached a contrary position,
finding unambiguously and pertinently that ‘no person who is guilty of
committing atrocities should ever again be allowed to assume a position of
power. Unless the ANC is prepared to take decisive action, the risk of
repetition will forever be present' (Report 1992). Marikana and other smaller
scale outrages against the weak and vulnerable attest to the accuracy of
Skweyiya's warning.
Kenneth Good is adjunct professor in global studies at RMIT
University Melbourne, and visiting professor in political studies at Rhodes
University Grahamstown.
References
Emma Gilbey, The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela, 1993.
Good, The Liberal Model and Africa: Elites Against
Democracy, 2002.
Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull, 1998.
Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into Complaints by
Former [ANC] Prisoners and Detainees (the Skweyiya Commission), 1992.
TRC, Final Report, vol 2, ch 4, 1998.
Paul Trewhela, Inside Quatro, 2009.
