Stompie Seipei | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Seipei 1974 Parys, South Africa |
| Died | 1 January 1989 (aged 14) [1] |
| Cause of death | Murdered (by Jerry Vusi Richardson) |
| Other names | Stompie Moeketsi |
James Seipei (1974 – 1 January 1989), also known as Stompie Moeketsi or Stompie Sepei, was a teenage United Democratic Front (UDF) activist from Parys, South Africa. He and three other boys were kidnapped on 29 December 1988 by members of Winnie Mandela's bodyguards (known as the Mandela United Football Club). He was murdered on 1 January 1989, the only one of the boys to be killed. [3]
Seipei joined the street uprising against apartheid in April 1985 at age ten, and soon took on a leading role. He became the country's youngest political detainee when he spent his 12th birthday in jail without trial. At the age of 13 he was expelled from school. [4]
Seipei, together with Kenny Kgase, Pelo Mekgwe and Thabiso Mono, were kidnapped on 29 December 1988 from the Methodist manse in Orlando, Soweto, the home of a Methodist minister, Paul Verryn. Seipei was wrongly [3] accused of being a police informer. Screams were heard as the 14-year-old was murdered by Jerry Vusi Richardson, a member of Winnie Mandela's team of bodyguards. Richardson died in 2009. [5] Seipei's body was recovered on waste ground near Winnie Mandela's home on 6 January 1989. [3] His throat had been cut. Richardson was later convicted of the murder. He stated that Winnie Mandela had ordered him, with others, to abduct the four youths from Soweto, of whom Seipei was the youngest. [6] The four were severely beaten. [4]
In 1991, Winnie Mandela was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to assault, [7] but her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a two-year suspended sentence on appeal. Mandela's role was later probed as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings, in 1997. [8]
Appearing before the TRC in 1997, she said allegations that she was involved in at least 18 human rights abuses including eight murders were "ridiculous" and said that her main accuser, former comrade Katiza Cebekhulu, was a former "mental patient" and his allegations against her were "hallucinations". [9] Cebekhulu had himself, before the 1991 trial, been tortured and kidnapped to Zambia, where he was detained for almost three years, at the behest of the ANC, before moving to the United Kingdom. [3] [10] The Commission found that the abduction of Seipei had been carried out on Mandela's instructions, and that she had "initiated and participated in the assaults", had resisted efforts by the "Mandela Crisis Committee" to get the boys released, and had attempted to cover up the death by claiming that Seipei had fled to Botswana. With regard to the actual murder of Seipei, the Commission found Mandela "negligent in that she failed to act responsibly in taking the necessary action required to avert his death". [3]
In February 1989, Abu Asvat, a prominent Soweto doctor, [11] who had examined Seipei after his abduction, was shot dead at his medical practice. [12] Winnie Mandela's alleged role in Asvat's killing was later probed as part of the TRC hearings after Asvat's murder; in addition her associate, Katiza Cebekhulu, implicated her in the murder of Asvat, as part of a cover-up of Seipei's death. [8] [13] The hearings were later adjourned amid claims that witnesses were being intimidated on Winnie Mandela's orders. [14]
In a 2017 documentary, former Soweto police officer Henk Heslinga alleged that former safety minister Sydney Mufamadi had instructed him to re-open the investigation into the death of Seipei, for the purpose of charging Winnie Mandela with murder. In the documentary, Heslinga claimed that Richardson admitted during an interview that Seipei had discovered Richardson was an informant and that he killed the child to cover his tracks. [15] However, Mufamadi denied the allegations in the documentary, stating that Helsinga's statements were false. [16] [17] The documentary had been described in a review by Vanity Fair as "unabashedly one-sided" and "overwhelmingly defensive". [18] Commentator Max du Preez called the decision by television station eNCA to broadcast the documentary without context in the week prior to Madikizela-Mandela's funeral a "serious mistake", and he described the film as making "outrageous claims", [19] while former TRC commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza questioned the motives of the documentary maker. [20]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa in 1996 after the end of apartheid. Authorised by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu, the commission invited witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, and selected some for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003, and from 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation".
Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu OMSG was a South African anti-apartheid activist, and the wife of fellow activist Walter Sisulu (1912–2003). She was affectionately known as "Ma Sisulu" throughout her lifetime by the South African public. In 2004 she was voted 57th in the SABC3's Great South Africans. She died on 2 June 2011 in her home in Linden, Johannesburg, South Africa, aged 92.
Pieter Willem Botha, was a South African politician. He served as the last prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and the first executive state president of South Africa from 1984 to 1989.
Parys, resort town, northern Free State province, South Africa. It is situated on the southern bank of the Vaal River. The name of the city is the Afrikaans translation of Paris. The origin of the name 'Parys' is attributed to German surveyor Schilbach, who named it after the city of Paris because of the similarity between its location next to the Vaal River and that of Paris on the River Seine. The area of Parys also includes the two townships of Tumahole and Schonkenville.
Vusi Sidney Mahlasela Ka Zwane is a Sotho South African singer-songwriter.
Eugene Alexander de Kock is a former South African Police colonel, torturer, and assassin, active under the apartheid government. Nicknamed "Prime Evil" by the press, De Kock was the commanding officer of C10, a counterinsurgency unit of the SAP that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered numerous anti-apartheid activists from the 1980s to the early 1990s. C10's victims included members of the African National Congress.
Hazel Crane was a prominent socialite, businesswoman and posthumous memoirist in South Africa. She was assassinated on 10 November 2003 near her mansion home in the plush northern Johannesburg suburb of Abbotsford – the same suburb in which controversial mining magnate Brett Kebble was murdered in 2005. Crane was killed as she left home to testify against an alleged organized crime boss in a murder trial.
Paul Verryn is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. Known for his anti-apartheid activism, he was Bishop of the church's Central District between 1997 and 2009. During that period, he was a prominent and controversial figure for his activism against xenophobia, and clashed with the South African government over his decision to accommodate hundreds of refugees at his Central Methodist Church in the Johannesburg city centre.
Amina Cachalia, OLB was a South African anti-Apartheid activist, women's rights activist, and politician. She was a longtime friend and ally of former President Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.
Gideon Nieuwoudt (1951–2005) was a former apartheid-era security policeman involved in the torture and murder of several anti-apartheid activists, including Steve Biko. Nieuwoudt, nicknamed "Notorious", was one of the most feared security policemen in the Eastern Cape for his interrogation methods including wet bags, poison, torture machines and often disguised himself as a priest, dubbing him the "Priest from hell". Nieuwoudt had up to five hearings at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in connection with the murders of numerous political activists.
Kidnapping in South Africa is a common crime in the country, with over 4,100 in the 2013/2014 period, and a child going missing every five hours.
Abu Baker Asvat, also known as Abu Asvat or Abu nicknamed Hurley was a South African medical doctor who practised in Soweto in the 1970s and 1980s. A founding member of Azapo, Asvat was the head of its health secretariat, and involved in initiatives aimed at improving the health of rural black South Africans during Apartheid.
Chris Hani, General-Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was assassinated by right-wing extremist Janusz Waluś on 10 April 1993. The assassination, later tied to members within the Conservative Party, occurred outside Hani's home in Dawn Park during a peak period of progressive anti-apartheid momentum in South Africa. After the assassination, racially fuelled riots drew international attention to the instability of the political division within South Africa, leading to an inclusive national democratic election in April 1994, won by the African National Congress (ANC). Waluś and his accomplice Clive Derby-Lewis were sentenced to death after their arrest in 1993; the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Daluxolo Christopher Mpofu is a South African lawyer, politician, and former businessman who was the National Chairperson of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) from 2014 to 2019. He served on the Judicial Service Commission from 2017 to 2022 and formerly served as chief executive officer of the South African Broadcasting Corporation from 2005 to 2009.
Phila Portia Ndwandwe, also known as Zandile or Zandi) was a fighter of the Natal cadre of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) formed by Muzi Ngwenya operating from Swaziland. MK was the armed wing of the African National Congress, created by Nelson Mandela in 1961. Zandi was a mother when she was abducted by Apartheid forces and tortured. She was executed.
Devikarani Priscilla Sewpal Jana was a South African human rights lawyer, politician and diplomat. As a member of the African National Congress (ANC) during the anti-apartheid movement, she participated in both legal activism as well as in the underground movement to end apartheid. She represented many significant figures in the movement, including South African president Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Steve Biko, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Jana was one of the very few South Africans who had access to political prisoners, including Mandela, in the maximum security Robben Island prison, and served as an emissary for coded messages between the political prisoners and the ANC leadership.
The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela is a biography of South African activist and politician Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, written by Sisonke Msimang in 2018. The biography "unashamedly" attempts to redeem the character of Mandela, a controversial figure.
The Security Branch of the South African Police, established in 1947 as the Special Branch, was the security police apparatus of the apartheid state in South Africa. From the 1960s to the 1980s, it was one of the three main state entities responsible for intelligence gathering, the others being the Bureau for State Security and the Military Intelligence division of the South African Defence Force. In 1987, at its peak, the Security Branch accounted for only thirteen percent of police personnel, but it wielded great influence as the "elite" service of the police.
Glenn Graham Goosen is a South African judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. He was formerly a judge of the Eastern Cape High Court from January 2012 until December 2022, when he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
