years
Kurt Shillinger and Peta Thornycroft
The state has had sufficient evidence for nine years to charge Winnie Madikizela- Mandela with kidnapping Soweto youth Lolo Sono.
Michael Seakamela, the former driver who took the badly beaten boy in the company of Madikizela-Mandela to his parent’s home, made a statement about the alleged kidnapping shortly after Sono disappeared in 1988.
Seakamela confirmed the statement to the police when the case was re-examined in 1995 and said he was prepared to give evidence in any case involving the disappearance of Sono.
According to the Boston Globe, Seakamela, a potentially devastating witness, went into hiding after allegedly being intimidated by Madikizela-Mandela on Saturday, following an interview he had had at his house with a truth commission investigator.
Seakamela’s 1988 statement, contained in docket number 236/11/88 at Meadowlands police station, is now missing.
Senior Superintendent Fred Dempsey took the original statement from Seakamela, and, in 1995 when the case was re-opened, Senior Superintendent Henk Heslinga signed the docket out of Meadowlands police station when a range of crimes associated with the Mandela United Football Club were re- visited by police investigators.
According to the Boston Globe, Heslinga made a note in his diary, after examining the docket, that there was a prima facie case for bringing charges against Madikizela-Mandela in connection with the disappearance of Sono.
In 1995, after completing a re- investigation into the murder of the Sowetan doctor, Dr Abu Baker Asvat, the acting Witwatersrand attorney general Kevin Attwell wrote to the police saying he could find insufficient new evidence to justify reopening the case.
Attwell does not remember seeing the Sono docket in 1995, nor does he remember the name Lolo Sono. It may be that the man in charge of the docket at the time, Superintendent HT Moodley, never showed it to him.
In the last few days Attwell has launched an extensive search for the docket, but has found no record that it ever passed through the attorney general’s office.
The police say the attorney general’s office takes the decision whether or not to prosecute, and that the attorney general declined.
However, lawyers say, there would have been nothing to stop the police laying a charge themselves, as they knew a young man had disappeared and they had two witnesses, Seakamela and Lolo Sono’s father, Nichodemus Sono, who had signed statements which corroborated each other.
In 1991, when Madikizela-Mandela was being charged with kidnapping murdered youth Stompie Seipei, the then attorney general Klaus von Lieres und Wilkau decided not to act on the Sono matter for political reasons.
He told the Boston Globe: “A second prosecution may have looked like deliberate harassment.”
Von Lieres told the Mail & Guardian this week: “Politics may have played a role as far as the police were concerned … I did not think politicians were so keen to see a proper investigation.”
The matter was discussed in the normal course of events with then minister of justice Kobie Coetzee, according to Von Lieres, but he says there was no pressure not to prosecute.
Despite Madikizela-Mandela’s dismissal on Thursday of Seakamela’s statement, implying that it had been extracted under torture, Seakamela had willingly repeated what he said in his statement to Dempsey to the Boston Globe on November 29.
Seakamela recalled that he drove Madikizela-Mandela and several football club members to the Sono home. They collected Lolo Sono and, after he was accused of being a police spy, he was beaten during the ride to Madikizela- Mandela’s house and then inside her garage. Later that evening, according to Seakamela, they returned to Lolo Sono’s house.
In Nichodemus Sono’s statement in the missing police docket, and in his testimony to the truth commission, he recalls the last time he saw his son, shivering and badly beaten in the powder-blue minibus. Madikizela-Mandela refused to release the boy, and his mother, Caroline Sono, brought him a jersey.
Seakamela said he saw Lolo Sono for the last time when he drove them all back to Madikizela-Mandela’s house. When he went to work that morning there was no trace of the youth.
Nichodemus Sono said he and Seakamela had refused to be witnesses in the 1991 trial of Madikizela-Mandela “because we had a feeling we were being watched”. But he said he would give evidence in any trial concerning the disappearance of his son now.
So too will Seakamela if he can be persuaded to come out of hiding. Madikizela-Mandela’s lawyers have denied that their client saw Seakamela last weekend.
National Police Commissioner George Fivaz said this week two corroborating statements from credible eyewitnesses were sufficient material for a prosecution.