Wally Mbhele
A FORMER commander of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) recently granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission allegedly tried to derail the amnesty applications of Jerry Richardson and other jailed members of the Mandela United Football Club.
Yet Richardson, who is seeking amnesty for the murder of teenage activist “Stompie” Seipei and three other youths, has successfully submitted his application.
The MK special operations commander, Wilson Sebiloane, was responsible for setting up self-defence units in Soweto after receiving extensive military training abroad. He also allegedly provided military training to members of the Mandela United Football Club, shortly before he was arrested in 1991 and charged with attempted murder and possession of an unlicensed firearm.
Sebiloane was appointed by Leeuwkop Prison’s political prisoners to co-ordinate their amnesty applications. He was granted amnesty on June 12 after the truth commission’s amnesty committee found his crimes had been politically motivated.
However, it has emerged that although Sebiloane filed amnesty application forms for himself and several other prisoners, he failed to deliver application forms for Richardson and an unknown number of others.
One of them is said to have engaged in a protest hunger strike at the prison when he did not receive a response from the truth commission. The commission only learnt about Richardson’s desire to apply for amnesty when it later went to interview him in prison.
The Mail & Guardian was unable to contact Sebiloane for comment.
The revelations about Richardson surfaced this week against a backdrop of an increasingly vociferous public exchange between Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s lawyers and the truth commission. The lawyers claim the commission is victimising their client. Madikizela-Mandela is expected to be subpoenaed to give evidence at a closed hearing next month. She will be questioned about Seipei’s death and the disappearance of four other youths.
Her lawyers complained to the commission that “snippets of false and untested information can only cause immense assault on the integrity and political profile of our client”.
The commission had not yet formally told Madikizela-Mandela what it wanted to talk to her about and it was therefore “alarming and sensational … to be saying it contemplates subpoenaing her”, said the lawyers, Seriti, Mavundla and Partners.
The truth commission’s investigation head, Dumisa Ntsebeza, hit back, saying the lawyers’ “misinformed” criticisms were based on “a misreading of newspaper reports”.
Ntsebeza said Madikizela-Mandela has been named in connection with Seipei’s death and the youths’ disappearance. “It is in her interests to to clear her name and to refute allegations against her,” he added.
l A former British Liberal Democrat MP, Emma Nicholson, said this week in London that she had offered an interview to the truth commission last month in connection with another witness the commission is keen to interview, Katiza Cebekhulu.
Cebekhulu, also a member of the Mandela United Football Club, was smuggled out of South Africa after he, Madikizela-Mandela and Xoliswa Falati were charged with Seipei’s kidnapping and murder.
Ntsebeza, who recently failed to find Cebekhulu in London, said that, without his testimony, the commission may lack conclusive evidence about the fate of the youths.
Nicholson, who holds Cebekhulu’s power of attorney, told the M&G she planned to visit South Africa in September, “during which time I’ll have time to speak [to the commission] on behalf of Cebekhulu”.