his diminutive figure. His mother does not know when ‘Stompo’
became ‘Stompie’.
Mananki was upset that some media reports had suggested that she
too believed Madikizela-Mandela was innocent. ‘The stories that said
Stompie’s mom believes Winnie did not kill Stompie are not true, she
never said that,’ explained Mananki’s daughter. ‘What she said was
that she forgave whoever was responsible for his death. All she knows
about his death is that he was last seen going to Winnie’s house.’
There is a backstory to the Seipei saga that might explain why
Magashule wants to create the impression that Stompie’s mother
shares his belief in Madikizela-Mandela’s innocence.
In November 1988 , about a month before Seipei’s brutal murder at the
hands of members of Madikizela-Mandela’s infamous Mandela United
Football Club, Magashule showed up at Reverend Paul Verryn’s office
at the South African Council of Churches’ headquarters.^12 In those
days, the SACC’s offices were at the Central Methodist Church in
downtown Johannesburg. Verryn had had intermittent contact with
Magashule’s group of internal exiles, and had even conducted the
ceremony when Magashule married his wife, Seipati, at the Central
Methodist Church in 1987.
When Magashule came to Verryn at the end of 1988 , he had with him
a young boy whom Verryn would later come to know as Stompie, a
fourteen-year-old political activist from Magashule’s hometown in the
Free State. According to Verryn, Magashule was also accompanied by
Matthew Chaskalson. Chaskalson, however, recalled that Magashule or
one of the other comrades from Parys had come to fetch Seipei from
his house in Johannesburg, after which he never saw the boy again.
Whatever the case, Magashule wanted Verryn to take Seipei into his
nora
(Nora)
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