Gangster State

Magashule spoke at a TCA meeting in February 1985. The purpose of
the gathering had been to address rent increases imposed on Tumahole
residents, and Magashule apparently urged residents to stand together
in their opposition to the increases.^10
Magashule was not one of the twenty-two accused in the Delmas trial,
but these court records do confirm that he at least participated in
struggle activities. However, the documented proof of his presence in
the broader struggle environment seems to be at odds with the tales
Magashule has told in an apparent attempt to embellish his struggle
record.
Dlodlo maintained that there was ‘anecdotal evidence from comrades’
that enabled her to ‘positively place Magashule in the trenches’. ‘A
senior commissar of uMkhonto weSizwe remembers meeting
Magashule in Botswana, he had come with three others from Tumahole
to seek training,’ she claimed.^11 But this contradicted Magashule’s own
version of events. As mentioned earlier, he told the ANC Oral History
Project that he was trained ‘inside the country’.
Dlodlo’s assertion also refuted those of my sources who were with
Magashule during that time, and who all maintained that he never
received any military training. Requests to Dlodlo’s spokesperson for
information on the ‘senior commissar’ she mentioned in her article
went unanswered.
It is also worth noting that Stompie Seipei’s mother, Mananki, does
not share Magashule’s view that Madikizela-Mandela was not involved
in her son’s death.
I went to her home in Tumahole several months after Magashule’s
visit. Mananki’s daughter translated her heartbreaking recollection of
Stompo, which is the original nickname his family gave him because of