Mother Of The Nation
"I would request Winnie to give Sibuniso back to me. I want Sibuniso or his bones and remains. She knows, deep inside of her, she knows. I'd like to find out as to where my son has been buried."
Nomsa Tshabalala, mother of Sibuniso Tshabaala, 19
How does she get away with it? The stories of Winnie Mandela and her football team and their viciously oppressive activities during South African apartheid when her husband was still imprisoned, were widespread. Her threats to young South Africans, the rumours of her having ordered her followers to murder young men.
Two bodies were exhumed at the home of Winnie Mandela earlier this week, presumed before examination to represent two young men last seen alive 24 years ago. "The mother of the nation" is still held in high esteem by many South Africans, but she is viewed as a vengeful and heartless demon by many others.
Her former friend, Xoliswa Falati, had testified before South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission that Winnie Mandela had "the blood of African children on her hands." Incredulous South Africans were advised in the 1990s by the commission that Ms. Mandela was held to be responsible for the disappearances in 1988 of Lolo Sono, 21, and his friend Sibuniso Tshabalala, 19.
Where in all of this is the responsibility of the kindly accommodating Bishop Desmond Tutu who headed the commission for the purpose of bringing reconciliation to the nation that had been so horribly abraded by those violent years. Believing as he did that truth would make them free of the need to look for vengeance. Did he murmur comfortingly in her ear that all was forgiven?
Her chief bodyguard had informed the commission that he and a colleague had stabbed the young men to death on her orders. The bodies unearthed this week were seen to have multiple stab wounds.
As head of the Mandela United Football Club, Jerry Richardson knew of what he spoke. But when Ms. Mandela spoke before the commission she denied all knowledge of the killings.
According to the senior investigator for the commission who cross-examined Ms. Mandela: "I think the standard of proof used by the truth commission basically established prima facie cases against Mrs. Mandela and members of the Mandela United Football Club, including in the disappearances of Sono and Tshabalala."
The incompetence that followed the police investigation into the two young men's disappearance, led critics to the opinion that it was deliberately poorly lead, to avoid the inevitability of having to arrive at and admit the truth that would incriminate the now-76-year-old "mother of the nation".
At the truth commission, Nicodemus Sono, father of one of the young men, described how Ms. Mandela had arrived at his home with his son, at gunpoint, face beaten and bruised. Ms. Mandela had demanded he hand over photographs, insisting to him that his son had acted as a spy for the apartheid police. He begged her to leave his son.
DNA tests are to be conducted for a definitive identification of the two disinterred bodies. Ms. Mandela had been sentenced to six years in prison in 1991 on charges of having kidnapped and caused the death of James Seipel "Stompie" Moeketsi, 14, last seen at her home, beaten to death. The conviction was overturned, the sentence reduced to a suspended jail term.
And so, what is South African justice prepared to do now with the elderly Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, if further investigation provides ample evidence of her having been responsible for two more deaths of young Africans? It isn't as though this will be entirely new; testimony had definitely implicated her in those deaths years ago.
Just another exercise in futility in South African justice.
Labels: Celebrity, Conflict, Crime, Human Relations, Justice, South Africa
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 14, 2013
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