Mandela protests innocence

Press, 23 February 1989, Page 8

Mandela protests innocence

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The South African nationalist, Winnie Mandela, is battling to salvage her political standing after two bodyguards appeared in court charged with murdering a 14-year-old boy. The trainer and one member of the “Mandela United Football Club” appeared briefly before Soweto magistrates accused of abducting and beating three youths, and of killing one of them, Stompie Seipei. Mrs Mandela acknowledges that her followers took the boys from a Methodist church-run shelter in December.

She says they acted because the white minister there was sexually

molesting youths — an allegation denied by the Church. In a television interview yesterday, Mrs Mandela said one of her associates had beaten Seipei in her house in an effort to persuade the boy to give evidence against the clergyman. But she insists Seipei left her home alive. “To suggest that I would be involved in anything as grisly as the murder of a child, particularly of that black child, is so absurd,” she told the British Broadcasting Corporation. Seipei’s body, throat slit, was found in a ditch last month. In an interview with Dutch tele-

vision Mrs Mandela said evidence by Seipei’s mother, who identified the body as that of her son, had been coerced. “I am convinced Stompie has not been killed. I do not believe that that is supposed to be his body,” Mrs Mandela said. Last week the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front (U.D.F.) umbrella anisation, trade unions and other b.ack groups said the club of 30-odd youths was seldom seen on the soccer pitch and conducted a reign of terror in Soweto township. It called for Mrs Mandela herself to be ostracised.