| Time | Summary | |
| 00:31 | In tonight’s programme we bring you a report on Steven Biko the man and the testimony of those who caused his death. We also analyse the three months in the late 1980s which will haunt Winnie Madikizela-Mandela for the rest of her life. This week the world was told that it was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela herself who killed youth activist Stompie Seipei and who ordered the deaths of Dr Abubaker Asvat and Lolo Sono. In a special edition of our programme on Tuesday we broadcast a BBC documentary outlining these allegations. In the past few weeks we’ve conducted our own investigation in an attempt to make sense off all these allegations and counter allegations. Special Report team member Benedict Motau visited the ex-leader of the Mandela United Football Club, Jerry Richardson in Leeukop Prison on Friday where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of Stompie Seipei. To our surprise Richardson confessed to the murder of somebody completely different, a young girl called Koekie ...more | Full Transcript and References |
| 01:40 | Yes, what I can tell you about is this one which I was never charged for, the case of Koekie Zwane, I’ve even written it in my affidavit. I want to tell the TRC about Koekie Zwane. The fact that Koekie Zwane was killed is because Mrs. Mandela handed me down the task and said Richardson, Koekie Zwane is disturbing me, she’s bothering me. Koekie will take a person here in the house and leave with them. Next thing we know, that person is arrested. Koekie is an informer. So I took Koekie and went to kill her. Her body was found and I was not arrested for that case. Koekie was buried and her parents did not cry about Koekie. Now that is one of the things I would like to show the TRC; that I used to do bad things like this. | Full Transcript and References |
| 02:32 | We had no way of establishing the truth about this murder, apart from getting confirmation that Koekie Zwane’s dead body was found in 1989. One complicating factor we had to keep in mind was the widespread allegations that Richardson was working with the security police. There is a real possibility that he could even have been an Agent Provocateur, in fact it now seems that most people in the drama surrounding Madikizela-Mandela had some connection with the security police, including the star witness in the BBC documentary, Katiza Cebekhulu. We have never encountered a muddier investigation. It seems as if all the perpetrators and participants are either lying or telling half truths or hiding something. The Special Report’s interest in this story lies not with Winnie and who she is or was, but with human rights violations committed in our past. Two boys connected with Madikizela-Mandela were killed in one wild year, 1988. Stompie Seipei was a teenage activist from Parys and Lolo ...more | Full Transcript and References |
| 03:44 | They said it was on the 29th of December in 1988 when Stompie was taken from the Methodist Church. Together with his friends they were taken to Mrs. Winnie Mandela’s house. They said to me they don’t know, they are still searching for Stompie; they don’t know whether he is alive or dead. And they told me that his friends told them that his brain was leaking. | Full Transcript and References |
| 04:17 | We are still not at ease. I’m having nightmares, dreams. Sometimes I hear knocks on the door thinking that it is Lolo. When I am sleeping I can see him flying from the sky, coming home, saying that mom I’m back home. Then I open my arms and take to hug him and say welcome home. I am pleading with Mrs. Mandela today, in front of the world, that please Mrs. Mandela, please give us our son back. Even if Lolo is dead, let Mrs. Mandela give us the remains of our son. | Full Transcript and References |
| 04:59 | But let’s start at the beginning. In 1977 Winnie was banished to Brandfort. When she came back to Soweto after a severe illness in 1988 she must have harboured a great deal of frustration and anger about her treatment by the police. She surrounded herself with a group of boys and young men whom she called the Mandela United Football Club. This team only played one match. By late 1989 the Mandela Football Club coached by Jerry Richardson had become the terror of the township. Also in Orlando West was popular Methodist minister Paul Verryn. Winnie seemed to have disliked Verryn’s influence. According to most characters in this drama Winnie decided to discredit Verryn. This is where Katiza Cebekhulu comes into the picture. Cebekhulu told the BBC that Winnie sent him to stay at the Methodist Mission and there to accuse Verryn of rape. It was at this point that things went horribly wrong for Madikizela-Mandela. Cebekhulu told Verryn’s assistant Xoliswa Falati that he was raped. She ...more | Full Transcript |
| 06:20 | We beat them up, man. You know, we have sjamboks at the kangaroo court. We have canes, you know. We used every method that we knew, that would make them tell more truth than what they had told us. Stompie, to start with him, I lifted him together with Slash not with Mrs. Mandela. Mrs. Mandela was sitting on the side. We lifted him from the roof height, we left him and he would hit the floor, I’m sure seven or eight times, up until we saw he was near dying. | Full Transcript and References |
| 06:56 | She is the one who started; she started hitting with her fist. She used to wear rings on her fingers and she had been gyming. I didn’t know about that, she hit right on the eye. | Full Transcript |
| 07:11 | Katiza Cebekhulu’s version of the assault is virtually the same, but Cebekhulu goes further; he says he went to the toilet that night and saw people near the Jacuzzi in the Mandela’s house. // I saw Mrs. Mandela wearing long clothes. How I know it was Mrs. Mandela I know there was a moon, not that full moon, but a moon that you can see this is a woman, this is a man, this is a boy. She was holding something shiny like a knife and Richardson was coming with other people. I did not see them properly. They were near to the swimming pool, the Jacuzzi. I saw Mrs. Mandela holding something shiny. He used their hands twice. Soon as I see that I become scared. | Full Transcript |
| 07:50 | But on Friday Jerry Richardson told us that Cebekhulu was lying. // Stompie, there’s no other person who killed him, except for me and Slash with instructions from Mrs. Mandela and Sonwabo. We took him and we threw him at Noordgesig. We walked there, we did not use a car; it was me, Slash and him; Stompie was walking with his own feet. Now we were going to kill him there. As we are walking with him like that, we have a pair of scissors and okapi’s on us. We then decided that an okapi knife won’t do anything to him. It won’t kill him, he’s strong. So we then decided we’d stab him with scissors. Indeed when we arrived there near New Canada we mutilated him, we put a scissor through his throat and it went out on the other side. It won’t cut him like this, so we used the okapi’s to slit his throat. | Full Transcript |
| 08:43 | We have no way to determine which of the two versions of Stompie’s death is true. The Supreme Court accepted that these boys were kidnapped and assaulted and Winnie was convicted of kidnapping. Stompie was only the first to die. The day after he died Madikizela-Mandela took Cebekhulu to Dr Abubaker Asvat. She wanted medical confirmation of Cebekhulu’s rape story. Asvat found no evidence of rape and refused to issue a certificate. He did state that Cebekhulu was mentally confused and that he cried occasionally. Asvat also examined Stompie and the other boys before Stompie died. Cebekhulu told the BBC that Winnie Mandela ordered him to show two unknown young men where Asvat’s surgery was. Asvat was shot to death on 27 January 1989. Asvats’ brother Ebrahim says the prosecutor in the Asvat murder trial showed him a document proving that the two killers were given R20 000 to get rid of Asvat. It was never used in court. Last week, Nickolas Dlamini, who is serving a life sentence ...more | Full Transcript and References |
| 10:15 | My son Lolo was in the kombi. He appeared badly beaten; his face was bruised and he was shivering. So, Mrs. Mandela told me that she is taking Lolo away because they labelled him as a spy. I pleaded with Winnie for more than an hour not to take my son away, but in vain. | Full Transcript |
| 10:45 | Cebekhulu also fell out of favour when he says he found photographs of a naked Winnie with her lover. He was arrested by the security police but in an unexplained twist handed over to Winnie. He claimed that she and her bodyguards beat him up badly. He says she offered him a choice between leaving the country and being dealt with by her. ANC security men smuggled him to Lusaka where he was jailed. By the end of 1991 Richardson was in jail serving life for the murder of Stompie. Winnie was sentenced to six years for kidnapping, later reduced to a fine on appeal and Falati was sentenced to ten years for assault and kidnapping. In the townships the UDF and ANC structures were upset with the behaviour of Winnie and her bodyguards; they formed a special crisis committee consisting of Cyril Ramaphosa, Murphy Morobe, Sister Bernard Ncube, Sydney Mufumadi, Abri Mokoena, Frank Chikane and Beyers Naude. | Full Transcript and References |
| 11:50 | We are particularly outraged at her obvious complicity in the recent abductions and assault on young people like Stompie. We believe that had Stompie and his three colleagues not been abducted by Mrs. Mandela’s football team, he would have been alive today. The Mass Democratic Movement at this point hereby wishes to distance itself from Mrs. Mandela and her actions. We call on our people, in particular the Soweto community to exercise this distancing in a dignified manner. | Full Transcript |
| 12:40 | It is clear that the police investigating Madikizela-Mandela and her football club did not do their work properly. The prosecution too was clearly flawed. Could the apartheid state have been part of a bizarre cover up, possibly because of their agents’ roles? What role did the ANC play then and what role are they playing now? Why did they take Cebekhulu out of the country and why was he never brought back? This is a story of cover-up layered upon cover-up. We hope things will become clearer when Winnie appears before the Truth Commission later this month and when Cebekhulu, Richardson and Dlamini testify before the Amnesty Committee. Stompie Seipei’s mother and Lolo Sono And Koekie Zwane’s parents deserve the whole truth. | Full Transcript and References |
