These lies and cheap victories of the ruling elite are a highway to hell

Some of Johannesburg’s leading lights turned up in their exquisite finery this week to celebrate a momentous achievement. It wasn’t the handover of such much-needed facilities as water, electricity or houses for the poor. It was far more significant: the renaming of a street.

William Nicol Drive, one of the city’s longest thoroughfares, was being renamed in honour of struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, mother of the nation. It was a splendid occasion. It seemed everybody who’s arrived was there.

Also gracing the occasion was Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who was of course minister of co-operative government & traditional affairs when Johannesburg started its inexorable descent into a world-class African city, with a dirty and grubby CBD, potholes everywhere, soaring crime and severely constrained access to water and power. She had in a sense come to collect her kudos.

The killing of Seipei and others is a stain not only on Madikizela-Mandela but on the ANC as well. But credit should go the leadership of the mass democratic movement who, at the time, disowned her

The occasion is objectionable on so many levels. Ratepayers, having to put up with so many difficulties, many of them inflicted by the council itself, have to watch as their money is needlessly spent on what is essentially a vanity project. The road had even been closed to allow our luminaries to strut without interruption.

Meanwhile, large swathes of the city, one of the major metropolises of the continent, have been without water for days. For residents, to see councillors making merry and living it up on their dime must have stuck in the craw. The money spent on the do was chicken feed; but if only they could tackle the city’s problems with equal zeal.

Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni says there’d be an uprising if things aren’t named after people’s heroes. She obviously has a low opinion of the public. People will take to the streets because they’re hungry, jobless, homeless and they see the wanton looting by the ruling elite amid such destitution.

There’s no doubt Madikizela-Mandela played an important role in the struggle, and suffered immensely for it. But she leaves behind some grisly skeletons in her cupboard. This renaming is part of an ongoing effort by her supporters to whitewash her tattered legacy.

But facts are stubborn things. I would have preferred the road to be named after Stompie Seipei, the 14-year-old boy who was brutally murdered on New Year’s Day in 1989 by the so-called Mandela United Football club, essentially a group of thugs under the command of Madikizela-Mandela who terrorised the community of Orlando West, Soweto, where she lived.

Seipei (or Moeketsi), a United Democratic Front activist, had fled police harassment in Parys and sought refuge along with other boys at the Methodist manse in Orlando West. The boys were kidnapped in December 1988 on the orders of Madikizela-Mandela, who falsely accused the priest of abusing them. A day later, Seipei was dead, and his body was discovered not far from Mandela’s house six days later.

Jerry Richardson, coach of the "football club", admitted in court that he had murdered Seipei by slitting his throat. Two other boys in the club, Siboniso Tshabalala and Lolo Sono, had disappeared shortly before Seipei’s murder, and their parents had searched for them without success.

Richardson, who was already serving his sentence for Seipei’s murder, testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Tshabalala and Sono were “slaughtered like goats” in December 1988 on the orders of Madikizela-Mandela, and their bodies buried near a mine dump. Their bodies were exhumed and given a proper burial in 2013, 25 years after they were killed.

One who escaped with his life is Katiza Cebekhulu, who somehow made his way to Lusaka to seek protection from the ANC. Instead, the organisation ordered that he be arrested.

I spoke to Cebekhulu in a Lusaka jail in the early ’90s. He was a sorry sight — lost, confused and bewildered, in a foreign country, locked up with people with whom he could hardly communicate. But more distressing, he didn’t know why he was in jail. A fellow prisoner had taken him under his wing, and would share the meal his family brought him every day.

History doesn’t write itself. It is a truthful recollection by those who witness the events

The man who killed Dr Abubaker Asvat at his Soweto surgery told the TRC the gun was provided by Madikizela-Mandela. Asvat, a member of Azapo, had treated Seipei after he was assaulted.

Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to assault. On appeal, her six-year sentence was reduced to a fine and a two-year suspended sentence. Appearing before the TRC, she showed no remorse. Allegations against her were “hallucinations”, she said.

But these grisly details cannot simply be swept under the carpet for political convenience. The killing of Seipei and others is a stain not only on Madikizela-Mandela, but on the ANC as well. Credit should go the leadership of the mass democratic movement who, at the time, disowned her. That leadership included one Cyril Ramaphosa, who now sings a different tune. We’re simply incapable of telling the truth.

Madikizela-Mandela’s hallowing comes shortly after the hypocrisy fest of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s death. I spent the better part of the 1980s in KwaZulu-Natal reporting one massacre after another by Inkatha and the dreaded KwaZulu police. I couldn’t recognise the person they were eulogising at Buthelezi’s funeral. IFP supporters could for once sit back and happily listen to their erstwhile foes praising their hero. Pity that no-one spoke for those who were butchered.

Ramaphosa said everything should be left to the judgment of history. But history doesn’t write itself. It is a truthful recollection by those who witness the events.

“Tell no lies,” said Amílcar Cabral, the brilliant intellectual and liberation fighter from Guinea-Bissau. “Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes or failures. Claim no easy victories.”