What We Lose(23)

This was the last time that Mr Sono saw his son.

Ms Madikizela-Mandela has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the abductions, assaults and killing of Lolo Sono or Sibuniso Tshabalala.



In this regard I find myself dubious about the politics of women’s peace groups, for example, which celebrate maternality as the basis for engaging in antimilitarist work. I do not see the mother with her child as either more morally credible or more morally capable than any other woman. A child can be used as a symbolic credential, a sentimental object, a badge of self-righteousness. I question the implicit belief that only “mothers” with “children of their own” have a real stake in the future of humanity.





On 29 December 1989, four youths—Pelo Mekgwe, Thabiso Mono, Kenneth Kgase and Moeketsi Stompie Seipei—were abducted from the Methodist manse in Soweto and taken to the Mandela home in Diepkloof Extension. The youths were accused of engaging in sexual relations with the Reverend Paul Verryn, the priest who ran the manse, and Seipei was singled out and accused of being a police informer. All four youths were assaulted, Seipei severely.

In early January, Seipei’s decomposing body was found in a river-bed on the outskirts of Soweto. His body and head were riddled with injuries and he had been stabbed in the neck three times.

For two weeks in early January, senior religious and community leaders negotiated with Ms Madikizela-Mandela to secure the release of the other youths held at the house. Madikizela-Mandela denied that they were being held against their will and stated that she had rescued them from sexual abuse at the manse.

When the youths were eventually released and the story spread to the media, Madikizela-Mandela issued several statements and conducted interviews in which she attacked the church for orchestrating a massive cover-up. The war of words continued into February. Following the identification of Stompie Seipei’s body, several members of the MUFC, including Mr Jerry Richardson, were arrested and charged with murder.

Ms Madikizela-Mandela has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the killing of Stompie Seipei on 1 January 1989.

The Commission received three versions of this killing. Jerry Richardson, who was convicted for the murder and applied for amnesty, claimed that he killed Seipei on Madikizela-Mandela’s instructions. Katiza Cebekhulu claimed that he witnessed Madikizela-Mandela stabbing Stompie Seipei, a version supported by John Morgan, who testified that he was instructed to dump Seipei’s body. The third version was presented in the form of an unsigned, typed section 29 detention statement from Mr Johannes ‘Themba’ Mabotha, a Vlakplaas askari who frequented the Mandela home, which states that he was present at a meeting when Richardson informed Madikizela-Mandela that he had killed Seipei. Although this statement claims that Madikizela-Mandela was shocked at what Richardson had told her, it goes on to allege that she was directly involved in an attempt to spread misinformation that Seipei was alive and had been seen in a refugee camp in Botswana. A further version, suggested by former Security Branch policeman Paul Erasmus, is that Richardson killed Seipei because he (Seipei) had found out that Richardson was an informer.

The various versions, with the exception of that of Erasmus, all implicate Ms Madikizela-Mandela, either directly or indirectly, in Seipei’s murder or its attempted cover-up.



On my last Christmas with my mother, we were in South Africa, where we ate dinner at my grandfather’s house in Johannesburg. We had slipped out of Philadelphia just before a snowstorm hit, while summer reigned in Joburg. I spent the morning doing laps in the pool at our vacation house and the evening in a Santa hat, eating beef tongue and fish biryani.

We sat in my grandfather’s living room, scraping the last bits of trifle from our dessert plates. A soccer game played on the TV. My aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins were all there. Conversation turned to my grandmother, my mother’s mother and matriarch of the family. It had been some time since she died—I was still in junior high when she passed away—but our family dinners were still marked by her absence.

“Aish,” my mother said into her trifle, “the worst times are when I wake up and I think, ‘I have to call Mama to say hello.’”

I realized that that was how heartbreak occurred. Your heart wants something, but reality resists it. Death is inert and heavy, and it has no relation to your heart’s desires.

Before everyone went home, the family gathered for a prayer of departure. My grandfather thanked God for all the family that had come from near and far. He asked God for our safe flight back home. And then he asked—his voice breaking—to heal my mother, and in response there were mumbled yeses, hallelujahs from around the room.

We said our goodbyes and loaded into the car. It was dark by then. My father was driving, my mother in the passenger seat. I sat in the back, cradling a tinfoil-topped ceramic dish full of tepid curry. I held it on my lap, letting it warm the tops of my thighs. The weather was hot during the day, but cold as late autumn at night.

We were driving on the N1 for less than ten minutes when we saw brake lights multiply in front of us. There was a traffic jam up ahead. Then there was the flashing red and yellow of emergency vehicles. An ambulance and police car were parked on the shoulder, outside the driver’s side of the car. An officer and two ambulance workers stood between the two emergency vehicles, their heads pointed at the ground before them.

I knew what it was before I even saw anything. My family had told us of the daily accidents on that road, of the day laborers who crossed the many lanes to get from one side to the other and were often clipped by flying cars. I heard my mother’s gasp from the front seat, but it was more than that. There was the knowledge, heavy on my heart, that something was very wrong. As we got closer to the scene, I made out the dead body of a man on the ground before the workers. He was lying faceup, his torso minced horizontally into three pieces.