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Witness Says He Saw Winnie Mandela Kill

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 26, 1997; Page A21

A former bodyguard of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela publicly accused her of murder for the first time today, declaring that he saw President Nelson Mandela's former wife stab a youthful associate whom she accused of being a spy for apartheid authorities.

The allegation was among the most explosive of those yet aired before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a week of hearings focusing on Madikizela-Mandela's role in a number of killings that occurred in the later years of apartheid, or white-minority rule. With Madikizela-Mandela seeking high office within South Africa's ruling political party, the African National Congress, the murder allegations constituted a potentially decisive moment in her rocky political career.

The hearings have centered on an erstwhile group of youths called the "Mandela United Football Club," which in fact comprised bodyguards with whom Madikizela-Mandela surrounded herself in the late 1980s while her husband was concluding 27 years of political imprisonment. Since the couple divorced last year, she has added her maiden name to the Mandela name.

At least a dozen slayings are being probed through the panel's questioning of dozens of witnesses, including members of Madikizela-Mandela's old entourage who have accused her of ordering several killings. Their testimony suggests that a primary motive for her actions was her fear of government spies as she attempted to thwart the white regime's security forces.

In a much anticipated appearance by a man who now lives in Britain and returned to South Africa two days ago under government protection, Katiza Cebekhulu became the first witness places a lethal weapon directly in Madikizela-Mandela's hands. Pointing at Madikizela-Mandela as hundreds of spectators looked on, Cebekhulu declared: "I saw her killing Stompie" -- referring to 14-year-old Moeketsi "Stompie" Seipei, who was slain on Jan. 1 1989.

Cebekhulu demonstrated how he said he saw her kneel and plunge a shiny object into the victim. The testimony paralleled a rendering of the incident in a recent book, "Katiza's Journey," by journalist Fred Bridgland. A former member of Britain's Parliament, Emma Nicholson, holds the copyright on the book and appeared before the commission with Cebekhulu today.

But Cebekhulu's testimony was attacked on several counts. For one thing, the killing occurred at night and perhaps not within his clear view. For another, his testimony contradicted that of Jerry Richardson, who was convicted of murdering Seipei at a 1990 trial. Richardson claims that Madikizela-Mandela ordered him to kill Seipei but did not do so herself.

During cross-examination, Madikizela-Mandela's attorney hammered at a theme that is her key defense against the allegations: that those who are accusing her had worked for the white government's security forces. That defense is particularly relevant in Cebekhulu's case because of persistent allegations that he spied for apartheid-era security agents and may have been infiltrated Madikizela-Mandela's entourage for that purpose.

Defense attorney Ishmail Semenya raised these allegations and reminded Cebekhulu that his mother told television interviewers that he was friendly with police and military personnel. Cebekhulu, who denied the accusation, returned to Britain late tonight, apparently fearing arrest on a defamation charge brought against him Monday by Madikizela-Mandela. An earlier arrest warrant -- based on his disappearance during a 1991 trial of Madikizela-Mandela and others on charges of kidnapping Seipei before his slaying -- had been quashed to allow him to return to testify.

The Seipei affair provides a glimpse into what several witnesses described as sordid machinations among Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards. Cebekhulu and others said Madikizela-Mandela wanted to discredit a local Methodist minister, the Rev. Paul Verryn, by fabricating claims that he was sexually abusing young men in his care.

Cebekhulu said he was sent to the minister's home, which had become a haven for anti-apartheid activists on the run from police, to create a situation in which an abuse claim could be lodged, according to these accounts. Once he succeeded, the witnesses allege, Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards then abducted four other youths, including Seipei, and took them to her home, where they were beaten and forced to agree that the minister had abused them.

"It was not the truth," Gabriel Pelo Mekgwe, one of the abducted men, said today in testimony in which he told of beatings that occurred at Madikizela-Mandela's home and that left Seipei's head "soft and swollen." Seipei purportedly was beaten more severely than the rest because another figure in Madikizela-Mandela's orbit, Xoliswa Falati, had told her that Seipei was a "sellout," or police informant.

Along with Madikizela-Mandela, Falati was convicted in 1991 in connection with the kidnapping. Unlike Madikizela-Mandela, who received a suspended sentence, Falati also was convicted of assault and sentenced to six years in prison. Today, Falati claimed she lied during that 1991 trial to protect the woman she called "my leader."

"That was our culture -- to protect our leaders," she said. "That's number one. Number two, I was scared."