Madikizela-Mandela could face prosecution for three more murders, reports Peta Thornycroft
Kuki Mosocu bled to death in the open veld opposite the Orlando railway station two days after her 23rd birthday. Mosocu was a long way from her mother in the Transkei when she died, unknown and unmourned, in Soweto.
Back home she was known as Pricilla. But then everything changed when she left the quiet, poor, but relatively safe life of rural Herschel for the bright lights and the struggle in Soweto. The day before she was repeatedly stabbed in her neck, Kuki had been to a funeral in Soweto. It was a time of many funerals, when there were sometimes 30 000 people in detention, and Winnie Mandela was still, to the outside world, the mother of the nation.
Commuters on the way to the station noticed her body in the open ground on December 18 1988. It was, the inquest report says, quite fresh. She had probably been killed the night before. She had no identification on her, and she was unremarkably dressed in an ordinary skirt and blouse, a tall, modest young woman who would lie in the mortuary for four months and be buried, unnamed, in a paupers grave.
Just before Christmas in 1988 her family in Soweto reported her missing. She was known to be friends with the Madikizela-Mandela household, close to the youngest daughter of that turbulent home, Zinzi.
But somehow Kuki fell out of favour, and according to Jerry Richardson, the reckless coach of the football club, she was suspected of being a spy. In a submission to the truth commission, he says Madikizela-Mandela told him to get rid of her. And so, he says, he did. He took into the veld near the station, and stabbed her many times in her neck. Richardson was to kill another youngster, Stompie Seipei, by also stabbing him in the neck a couple of weeks later.
In 1995 the police had re-investigated the murder of Soweto doctor Dr Abu Baker Asvat. Investigators went to see Richardson in prison where he was serving a sentence for killing Seipei. During their conversation Richardson began telling the police how he had killed another person, Mosocu. The police checked their records, found a woman fitting her description had indeed been murdered on that night, and went and exhumed her from her paupers grave.
The police contacted a Methodist minister in the area who went to Mosocus mother Emily to break the news that Kuki was almost certainly no longer a missing person, but a dead one. Emily was devastated. She came to Soweto for DNA tests and officially to identify the body of her eldest child. A few days later Mosocu was buried again, in the old part of the Avalon cemetery.
The police, now more confident that Richardson was telling the truth, asked him about two missing youths, Lolo Sono and Siboniso Tshabalala. Oh, yes, said Richardson, I know where they are buried.
These two boys were accused by Madikizela- Mandela of being spies after two members of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) were shot dead in Soweto in Richardsons house.
Richardson accompanied the police to the place he said they were buried opposite the Soweto highway. For five days, bulldozers and front-end loaders dug deep into an old mine shaft. But no bodies were found.
Richardson couldnt explain. At that time he was admitting no personal involvement in Sono and Tshabalalas disappearance. Since then he has told the truth commission that he killed the two. Again he says he did it on Winnies orders.
Police have confirmed that in 1995 they paid Richardson R10 000 for information given to his handler which lead to the deaths of the two MK men in his house. Investigators in 1995 say they confirmed Richardson had been a registered police informer, and had not been paid this amount because his handler had been killed in the shoot-out along with the two men.
Madikizela-Mandelas date with the truth commission is also her 63rd birthday.