TUESDAY, 6.00PM:
A SECOND Mandela name was dragged into the Truth Commission’s hearings yesterday. Gift Ntombeni, a former Mandela United Football Club member confirmed claims by previous witnesses that the club had carved the letters ‘ANC’ and ‘WM’ into the flesh of victims, and burnt their feet.
But he said Zinzi Mandela-Hlongwane, daughter of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, had initiated both practices, and been the first to try them out. He said club members hunted down ‘informers’ on behalf of the two Mandela women. No-one dared defy them, for fear of being branded informers themselves.
TUESDAY, 1.00PM:
A FORENSIC pathologist confirmed today that there were two separate sets of stab wounds on the badly decomposing body of murdered teenage activist Stompie Sepei. Dr Patricia Klepp testified to the Truth Commission today that those wounds probably killed the teenager.
Last week witness Katiza Cebekhulu caused controversy when he told the Truth Commission he witnessed the stabbing. He said he saw Winnie Madikizela-Mandela make two “up-and-down” movements over Stompie’s body with a sharp object which he described as glittering in the moonlight. Klepp said today the two 1,5cm deep incisions behind Sepei’s right ear were probably caused by a two-edged blade.
A second witness, Jerry Richardson, has said in his amnesty application for the murder that he “slaughtered the boy like a sheep” with one edge of a garden shears. Though Klepp said she would not use that expression herself, there was indeed a four centimetre long gash on the left-hand side of his neck. But she disputed Richardson’s claim that the boy’s throat had been cut.
Klepp also said the body showed evidence of severe beating as there were “subcutaneous contusions” all over his limbs and head. Klepp could not confirm that Sepei suffered any brain damage, as “the brain was in a state of liquification” by the time she did her examination.
MONDAY, 10.00PM
CYRIL MBATHA, one of two men convicted for the murder of Soweto doctor Abu-Baker Asvat, tried to reconcile the three different version of his story of the killing of Dr Abu-Baker Asvat before the truth commission on Monday.
Mbatha claimed his first version of events was contained in his confession used in his trial, and was tortured out of him by police. He said his second version, told to truth commission investigators earlier this year, was also inaccurate because he knew nothing about the TRC and did not trust it with “the truth”.
He presented a third statement to the commission on Monday, in which he described visiting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s house, where she had given his co-accused, Thulani Dlamini, the gun Mbatha used to shoot Asvat twice in the chest in his Soweto surgery. Prior to visiting Madikizela-Mandela’s house, Mbatha said Dlamini told him to book an appointment with Asvat — which Mbatha did, under a pseudonym. Asvat’s receptionist, Albertina Sisulu, took Mbatha’s thumbprint.