washingtonpost.com: ANC Wary Of Guards, Panel Told

ANC Wary of Guards, Panel Told

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 27, 1997; Page A39

African National Congress leaders who tried in the late 1980s to shut down Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's feared bodyguard squad said today that the group included government spies who manipulated her to discredit her famous name and the anti-apartheid movement it symbolized.

The testimony from the ANC officials and from Madikizela-Mandela, a prominent member of their party, before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission produced fundamentally conflicting accounts of the mayhem that unfolded around the controversial leader and the party's efforts to stop it.

This picture of a decade-old conflict within the ANC emerged on the third day of the truth panel's hearings into the activities of the "Mandela United Football Club." The bodyguard group (it did not play soccer, or football as it is called here) perpetrated a reign of terror in the black township of Soweto during the final years of the struggle against apartheid, the racial separation policies of the white-minority government.

Created after South Africa's first all-races election in 1994, the truth commission is investigating human rights abuses on all sides of the apartheid-era conflict. This week it has turned its attention to a dozen slayings and other crimes attributed to Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards.

Founded in Soweto in 1986, the group was responsible for acts of violence that often bore the imprint of the white government's security forces. Security police were never far from Madikizela-Mandela while her then-husband, Nelson Mandela, was serving 27 years of political imprisonment; the Mandelas divorced last year.

One witness, Katiza Cebekhulu, a former member of the group, testified Tuesday that he saw Madikizela-Mandela stab to death a 14-year-old activist, Moeketsi "Stompie" Seipei, nearly nine years ago. Madikizela-Mandela has denied this and other allegations of brutality, and no other witness has corroborated Cebekhulu's claim. Today, Sydney Mufamadi, the minister of safety and security and a past leader of the once-illegal ANC's surrogate organization, said Cebekhulu recently has been revealed as an operative of apartheid-era security forces.

Speaking briefly before today's session adjourned, Mufamadi and others who formed the leadership of the Mandela Crisis Committee of the late 1980s said they had tried unsuccessfully to disband the bodyguards.

The Rev. Frank Chikane, former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches and now chief of staff to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, said that during the days of the bodyguards' reign he did not feel safe visiting Madikizela-Mandela's home on missions to resolve various crises.

"I myself didn't know which of those boys were serving the [apartheid] regime," he said.

These officials, who spoke late in today's session, are expected to give fuller details Thursday of their conflicts with Madikizela-Mandela and her bodyguards. It was clear today that their testimony and hers -- given during closed-door hearings in September -- are full of contradictions. For instance, she claimed never to have met with the crisis committee.

The long-standing conflict between Madikizela-Mandela and ANC leaders is part and parcel not only of the crisis that brought her before the truth commission but also of the ANC's effort to thwart her campaign for the party's deputy presidency.

Despite the accusations and acrimony that emerged during today's hearing, there also were attempts at reconciliation.

The Methodist bishop of Johannesburg, Paul Verryn, wept aloud as he apologized for not doing enough to protect Seipei from Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards. Seipei had been in Verryn's care.

Verryn's residence in Soweto had been a haven for anti-apartheid activists on the run. In December 1988, acting on trumped-up allegations that Verryn was abusing the youths in his care, Madikizela-Mandela allegedly sent her bodyguards to kidnap Seipei and three other youths and bring them to her home.

There, the youths were severely beaten. Seipei received special attention because an associate of Madikizela-Mandela's, Xoliswa Falati, claimed that the boy was a police informer. His body was found in January 1989.

Madikizela-Mandela was found guilty of kidnapping in 1991, but an additional conviction of being an accessory to assault was dropped on appeal a year later. The bodyguards' leader, Jerry Richardson, was convicted of Seipei's murder.

Verryn's emotional plea today came as he explained his regret at not having acted to protect Seipei from those plying rumors that he was an informant. Before hundreds of spectators, he told Joyce Seipei, the dead boy's mother: "Had I acted in another way, he could be alive today. So I want to apologize to Mrs. Seipei for my part."

Then, turning to Madikizela-Mandela, who sat stoically, he said: "I long for our reconciliation. I have been profoundly affected by some of the things you have said about me and that have hurt me and cut me to the quick. I have had to struggle to come to some place to forgive, even if you do not want forgiveness."

Madikizela-Mandela nodded in acknowledgment, but remained silent. Through her lawyer, she said she would be willing to meet with Verryn privately.

Joyce Seipei said in an interview after the hearing that she also would like to meet with Madikizela-Mandela to ask her, "If what happened to Stompie happened to her son, how would she feel?"

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