Stefaans Brummer
More allegations linking Winnie mandela to the 1989 murder of teenage activist Stompie Seipei and other crimes emerged this week as she prepared to sue former President FW de Klerk for a police discreditation campaign against her.
Trainer of the controversial Mandela Football Club, Jerry Richardson, jailed in 1990 for the murder of 14- year-old Seipei, has reportedly spoken out in jail for a second time, claiming Mandela ordered the murder.
And Xoliswa Falati, estranged friend of Mandela, allegedly claimed she had taken the rap for Mandela in their 1991 trial for the kidnap and assault of Seipei, where Mandela was sentenced to a R15 000 fine on appeal. Mandela failed in an interdict attempt in June last year to gag Falati from speaking out.
Both allegations were published this week in the Dutch news journal Nieuwe Revu, days after the Afrikaans Sunday paper Rapport said that Richardson had claimed from Leeuwkop Prison that “a person” had given him the fatal order.
Meanwhile, Mandela, fired as a deputy minister by her estranged husband President Nelson Mandela earlier this year, and ANC MP Peter Mokaba are planning to sue Deputy President FW de Klerk for a police smear campaign against them after 1990.
Details of the campaign, which Mandela is understood to blame for her fall from grace and the break-down of her marriage, were first published by the Mail & Guardian three weeks ago.
The report, based on confessions and documentation provided by former security police operative Paul Erasmus, detailed a 1991 operation, sanctioned at security police headquarters in Pretoria, to publicise in the international media “abuses” of the Mandela Football Club and allegations of Mandela’s marital
Former police commissioner General Johan van der Merwe subsequently said De Klerk’s cabinet had full knowledge of covert police operations.
Erasmus said information fed to the media was partly true, partly distortion. The extent of the distortion remains unexplained.
Nieuwe Revu journalist Helene Schilders said in her article that she visited Richardson in Leeuwkop Prison, where he told her: “I called her ‘mommy’. I wanted to do everything for her. That is why I gave her a cover. I would still protect her if she had shown interest in me, but now I feel used.
“Soon I will be going to the Truth Commission. Then I will tell what really happened. Perhaps I will get amnesty …
“I murdered Stompie. But during the trial I said that it was my own initiative, while in truth it had been an order of Winnie’s. She heard from an important ANC member that he was an informer. She was always extremely scared of spies … Stompie was detained in the house of Winnie. Everyone who entered used him as a boxing ball, Winnie too. He was already in a bad way when I took him to a field to murder him.”
Richardson also claimed, according to the article, that on Mandela’s orders he had stabbed another member of the football club “who had wanted to inform the secret police” and that he had petrol bombed houses of “people who did not want their children to go with the football team”. The football team member survived.
The journal quoted Falati as saying: “During the (1991) court case, I took the responsibility for the abuse of Stompie and the other youths on me. That was an order of Winnie and her daughter Zindzi. Otherwise, something would have happened to me. Winnie did not ask, she ordered. She never thanked me. She would have had my house restored.”
Falati and Richardson’s new evidence is bound to pour cold water on a Department of Correctional Services statement this week that it had a sworn affidavit from Richardson that he had told the Rapport journalist no more than that he was prepared to testify to the Truth
Police have confirmed that they are investigating several unsolved crimes in connection with the Mandela Football Club and that detectives have travelled to London to interview British MP Emma Nicholson, who has claimed to have tape recordings of confessions by Katiza Cebekhulu, a member of the football team who was spirited away to Zambia before he could testify in Mandela’s 1991 trial.
Mandela refused to respond to Mail & Guardian inquiries this week. Mokaba, widely regarded as her political ally, said: “I will not speak on behalf of Winnie. I believe we all need to stand up to what we did. There has to be a mechanism to investigate such allegations.”
Mokaba confirmed he and Mandela had met with their lawyer and Erasmus earlier this month with a view to instituting civil action against De Klerk for damages arising from police discreditation campaigns against them. He argued the Truth Commission would not have the “teeth” to expose the full truth.
“I don’t think we should simply punish the footsoldiers — but the commanders. We want to protect the Government of National Unity, but it cannot be protected with lies.”
He said: “We are certainly going ahead (with a civil suit) to expose everything. The legal route is better because it has teeth. At the Truth Commission, people must volunteer information.”
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