The UDF Publicly Disowns Winnie Mandela

The UDF Publicly Disowns Winnie Mandela

On 16 February 1989, the United Democratic Front (UDF) publicly disowned Winnie Mandela following a series of allegations that finally estranged her from her incarcerated husband, Nelson Mandela. Key among some of these allegations was the kidnapping and murder of a young boy called Stompie Moeketsi Seipei. In 1988, Winnie Mandela’s home, in Soweto, was burned by Daliwonga high school students in retaliation for the actions of the Mandela United Football Club. By 1989, after appeals from local residents, and after the Seipei kidnapping, the UDF, in the form of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), “disowned” Winnie Mandela for “violating human rights … in the name of the struggle against apartheid”.

Winnie Mandela returned to Soweto from Brandfort in late 1985, in defiance of a banning order, issued by the apartheid regime. During her banishment, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) had formed a mass movement against apartheid. The new organisations relied more heavily on collective decision-making structures, rather than on individual charisma. Instead of following the lead of the Mass Democratic Movement, Winnie Mandela took a more militaristic approach, eschewing the approach of the newer bodies. She began dressing in military garb and surrounding herself with bodyguards, which were known as the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC).

Living in Winnie Mandela’s home, the putative “soccer team” began hearing family disputes, delivering “judgments” and “sentences” and eventually became associated with kidnappings, torture and murder. She was implicated in at least 15 deaths during this time period. For example, in November 1988, 21-year-old Lolo Sono, and his 19-year-old friend, Siboniso Shabalala, disappeared from Soweto. Sono’s father said he saw his son in a kombi with Winnie Mandela, and that his son had been badly beaten. Sono’s mother claimed that Mrs Mandela had labelled her son a spy and had said she was “taking him away”.

At the subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings, Sono’s stepmother said, “I am pleading with Mrs Mandela today, in front of the whole world, that please, Mrs Mandela, give us our son back. Even if he is dead, let Mrs Mandela give us the remains of our son, so that we must bury him decently.” In 2013, Sono and Shabalala’s bodies were exhumed from paupers’ graves in Soweto’s Avalon Cemetery by the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) Missing Persons Task Team (MPTT), having been stabbed soon after their abductions.

On 29 December 1988, Jerry Richardson, who was coach of the Mandela Football Club, abducted 14-year-old James Seipei (aka “Stompie Sepei”) and three other youths from the home of Methodist Priest Paul Verryn, with Richardson claiming that Winnie Mandela had the youths taken to her home because she suspected the Priest was sexually abusing them. These allegations that were later proven to be baseless. The four were beaten to get them to admit to having had sex with the Priest.

Later on, Sepei was accused of being a police informer and was murdered, at the age of 14, by Jerry Vusumuzi Richardson, and his body was later found in a field with stab wounds to the throat on 6 January 1989. In 1991, following a case of kidnapping and murder against Ms Mandela, she was acquitted of all charges, except for the kidnapping of Sepei. A key witness in the Sepei case was Katiza Cebekhulu, who was going to testify that Madikizela-Mandela had killed Sepei. Cebekhulu was tortured and kidnapped to Zambia by Madikizela-Mandela’s supporters, prior to the trial, to prevent him testifying against her. Her six-year jail sentence was then reduced to a fine on appeal.

On 8 August 1990, the Rand Supreme Court sentenced Jerry Richardson to death for the murder of 14-year-old Stompie Seipei. Jerry Richardson, who was the coach of the Mandela Football Club, admitted during the TRC hearings that he was a Security Branch informer. He had penetrated Winnie Mandela’s inner circle to discredit her as instructed by his handlers. The Mandela United Football Club (MUFC) became a source of considerable violence and controversy between 1987 and 1989, which Madikizela-Mandela disputed. Nevertheless, both the liberation movement in exile and the MDM internally recognised this to be case and both entities stated this so clearly in their statements of 16 February 1989.

On 25 November 1997, Katiza Cebekhulu, who was a former member of the Mandela United Football Club and had disappeared on the eve of the 1991 trial in which he was expected to testify against Winnie Mandela, appeared before the TRC. He repeated allegations that he had seen Winnie Madikizela-Mandela stab Stompie Seipei. Furthermore, he stated that Madikizela-Mandela had ordered an assault on Seipei a few days before his death, after accusations that he was a police spy. According to Cebekhulu, another youngster, Lolo Sono, disappeared after being assaulted by Madikizela-Mandela. Cebekhulu had agreed to testify before the TRC after he had received assurance of immunity from prosecution.

Cebekhulu had re-emerged from a Zambian prison, where he was detained without trial for almost three years. Ms Madikizela-Mandela denied any knowledge of his disappearance or any involvement in his abduction. Information that was provided by Cebekhulu was that he was taken out of the country and placed illegally in a Zambian prison at the request of the African National Congress (ANC) with the assistance of the Zambian authorities. Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda admitted that the ANC had requested his assistance with Cebekhulu. Nevertheless, the ANC had never taken any responsibility for its actions regarding Cebekhulu.

Katiza Cebekhulu returned from exile under the protective guard of a former British Member of Parliament, Emma Nicholson, to render his version of the events in December 1988. Although he was dismissed by many, including the TRC, as an “unreliable witness”, he claimed to have seen Ms Madikizela-Mandela “kill Stompie”, stabbing the body with a shiny object twice. In February 1989, Abu Asvat, a prominent Soweto doctor, who had examined Seipei after his abduction, was shot dead at his medical practice. Madikizela-Mandela’s alleged role in Asvat’s killing was later probed as part of the TRC hearings after the doctor’s murder. Katiza Cebekhulu, implicated her in the murder of Asvat, as part of a cover-up of Seipei’s death

The ANC had good reason to believe that the apartheid authorities would try to use any information disclosed by Cebekhulu, as evidenced by the disclosure of Stratkom documents (Strategic Communications, a division of the apartheid State Security Council that was established to discredit other organisations and anti-apartheid activists) revealing the dissemination of disinformation regarding the ANC during this period. Aware that it was losing power, the National Party wanted to delegitimise the radical wing of the ANC personified by figures such as Madikizela-Mandela, Chris Hani, Harry Gwala and Peter Mokaba. The goal was to discredit Madikizela-Mandela to such an extent that she would be isolated and eliminated from the inner circle of the ANC.

In a stunning confession, former Security Branch policeman, Paul Erasmus, who worked for Stratkom, outlined how the smear campaign was manipulated to discredit Madikizela-Mandela. According to Erasmus, “I would drop letters to the local and international press about Winnie being a hopeless drunkard, unstable and having relationships with everyone that came along. On the political side, it was to drive divisions between her and the ANC.” The most shocking revelation of Erasmus was his claim that the entire Mandela Football Club were informers working for the Security Branch. In the 1991 trial, Katiza Cebekhulu, who had been part of the Mandela Football Club, was, according to Erasmus, working for the Security Branch.

In the face of criticism and concerns raised by senior leaders of the liberation movement both at home and in exile, as well as the outrage of the local community, it was difficult to understand why Madikizela-Mandela failed to recognise the threat that the club was posing and how damaging it had been to her reputation. The African National Congress (ANC) in exile issued a statement on 18 February 1989 criticising her judgment, after she refused to heed instructions, issued from prison by Nelson Mandela, to dissociate herself from the Football Club, and after attempts at mediation by an ANC crisis committee failed.

Interesting enough, the ANC had recognised that there were sinister forces behind the Mandela Football Club. The Statement had stated that “We have every reason to believe that the club was infiltrated by the enemy, and that most of its activities were guided by the hand of the enemy for the purposes of causing disunity with the community and discrediting the name of Nelson Mandela and organisation of which he is the leader”.

The ANC Statement further said, “It is with a feeling of terrible sadness that we consider it necessary to express our reservations about Winnie Mandela’s judgement in relation to the Mandela Football Club. But we should not forget what Comrade Winnie Mandela has gone through and her immense contribution to the liberation struggle. She has not only suffered the anguish of over a quarter of a century of separation from her husband, but has also experienced unending persecution at the hands of the regime, such as banishment, imprisonment, torture and sustained harassment over a period of more than two decades.”

According to the Statement, “Bearing the name of Mandela and in her own right, she increasingly became one of the symbols of resistance to racist tyranny both at home and abroad. We firmly believe, without prejudging all the issues which have been raised in relation to the problem, that whatever mistakes were made should be viewed against the background of her overall contribution on the one hand, and the activities of the enemy on the other. Viewed in this light, we consider it important that the movement as a whole should adopt a balanced approach to the problems that have arisen.”

In conclusion, the Statement asserted: “The ANC, for its part, will continue to work for the unity of our people, and we have no doubt that all those who have participated in attempting to solve this problem have done so in the best interests of our struggle.”

Sources:

Wikipedia

South African History Online (SAHO).

Raeesa Pather, “A UDF activist remembers Winnie”, Mail & Guardian, 16 April 2018.

William Claiborne, “Black Groups Ostracize Mrs Mandela: Step Follows Killing of S. African Youth”, The Washington Post, 16 February 1989.

South African Press Association, “MDM Distanced Itself from Winnie After She Ignored Mandela”, SAPA, 27 November 1997.

Pascale Lamache, “The case for and against Winnie Madikizela-Mandela”, Superlinear, 12 April 2018.

Martin Plaut, “What to make of Winnie Mandela”, London Review of Books, Vol. 42 No. 5, 5 March 2020.

Kenneth Good, “Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the Ghosts of Crimes Past”, www.PoliticsWeb.co.za, 2013 Archive.

ANC Statements, “The Mandela Football Club”, Sechaba, Vol. 23 No. 4, April 1989.

Castro Khwela

Good evening fellow Compatriots!