Moseneke heaps praise on ‘hero of the struggle’
• Former deputy chief justice rejects accusations against her over cases
Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke has hailed Winnie MadikizelaMandela as an “absolute heroine, with an incredible ability to be able to take on injustice and to soak up pain in a way that is not immediately describable”.
“I think she’s a hero of the struggle. Period. Does she have limitations? All heroes do.
“No one ever allows her to be a young woman with two young babies, whose husband goes to jail — and goes forever. Nobody allows her that space, where she fought her way through the difficult challenges that apartheid and oppression throws at her and that patriarchy throws at her,” he told Business Day on Tuesday night.
He defended and represented Madikizela-Mandela in a number of criminal and civil cases and says he witnessed her real pain at the passing of her former husband, Nelson Mandela, in December 2013.
“She had real pain. Because, whatever the fallout was, he was her husband, whom she protected for 27 years or more,” he said, adding that MadikizelaMandela had been a regular visitor to Mandela’s hospital bed in his final days.
Moseneke said he was deeply disturbed by the accusations levelled at MadikizelaMandela in the days after her passing, particularly in relation to the criminal cases she faced.
He was part of the formidable legal team that defended Madikizela-Mandela when she was put on trial for the kidnapping of four young boys in 1991. One of the boys, 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi, later died of his injuries.
Madikizela-Mandela’s chief bodyguard, Jerry Richardson, was convicted of the murder.
Moseneke said MadikizelaMandela believed that the case had been bought against her with “the real conscious attempt to create a real rift between her and Nelson Mandela.
“She saw it as a political ploy to taint her to the core … and to separate her from Nelson Mandela,” he said.
He described seeing her every morning during the six months of the trial “and every morning she was so warm and confident that she will overcome. She was so strong.
“That was quite affirming to me, as her counsel.”
Following her kidnapping conviction, which was imposed with a six-year sentence, Moseneke said MadikizelaMandela was “resilient”.
“She had no fear. She would have hated, of course, to go to jail at a time when we were marching towards a democracy, but she wasn’t afraid.
“She was near to fearless. She had seen it all before.”
Some of his most precious memories of MadikizelaMandela were linked to the Sunday afternoons he spent in her home in preparation for the trial. “It would be a warm home like the home I knew growing up with my own mother. There’d be lots of food and warmth. She’d pick up the children,” he said.
“Anyone who calls her a monster is talking rubbish. She was wonderful.”
Like George Bizos, who also represented her in the Stompie trial, Moseneke does not believe the media treated MadikizelaMandela fairly.
“The media was very ravaging, I thought, and concluded a number of horrible things. The one conclusion — that she had a relationship with Richardson — there is no evidence to support [it]. No such evidence exists.
“Two, the evidence has shown far lesser crimes than the judge pronounced on and she was found guilty on those,” he said, referring to the Appeal Court ruling that there was evidence that Madikizela-Mandela believed the young men were being abused and were in danger when she became involved in their kidnapping.
The Appeal Court set aside Madikizela-Mandela’s six-year sentence for kidnapping and replaced it with a fine and a suspended sentence.
“There were no findings of murder against her [MadikizelaMandela], and there were no findings that she assaulted Stompie in any way.
“Did she remove the young people from where they were? Yes. Did she believe that they might have been abused? That was her subjective belief, and that is why she acted the way she did.
“Was every decision she made wise? No, not every one,” he said.
The “hype” that surrounded the Stompie case did not accurately reflect what MadikizelaMandela was actually tried for, and convicted of, he said.
Moseneke also represented Madikizela-Mandela during her divorce from Mandela, following what he has described as “indiscretions on her part”.
“She thought that those who wanted her to be away from Nelson Mandela had succeeded.
“She thought that the camaraderie … and everything that [had] happened was such that he would never think of something as extreme as a divorce. The impact on her was terrible.”
He described MadikizelaMandela as a deeply religious woman who took great comfort in her faith.
He was clearly moved when he recounted how she came to his family home after his 26-year-old son, Bo, died of diabetic complications in October 2005 and embraced him, “crying like a baby”.
“She had such softness. She came to our home, and she holds onto me and she cries to the ground.”
Moseneke said he continued to have a strong bond with Madikizela-Mandela towards the end of her life, despite her legal challenges to Mandela’s will, over which he was appointed as an executor.
“She referred to me as her comrade, and her counsel…
“I worked a lot with her in administering Nelson Mandela’s estate, even despite the case where she has sued me as executor,” he said.
In January, the Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by Madikizela-Mandela against an earlier court ruling rejecting her claim to his house in Qunu in the Eastern Cape.
The court endorsed the High Court in Mthatha’s dismissal of Madikizela-Mandela’s claim on the basis that it should have been lodged while Mandela was still alive. She had lost her last legal struggle.
She died just more than two months later.
For Moseneke, the backlash that followed MadikizelaMandela’s death was deeply painful, particularly because he believed the full extent of what she suffered at the hands of apartheid authorities had yet to be fully known or understood.
“She went through so much. She was convicted for assaulting police who invaded her private space while she was half dressed, and she gave the guy a big klap, and she gets charged for that.
“She had to go and live in a little home in Brandfort alone, unprotected, in difficult circumstances, and she still survives all of this. She endured.
“I have unadulterated praise for her, in bringing us to where we are. I think she deserves credit for that. I certainly hope she receives it.”
DID SHE BELIEVE THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABUSED? THAT WAS HER SUBJECTIVE BELIEF SHE THOUGHT THAT THOSE WHO WANTED HER TO BE AWAY FROM MADIBA HAD SUCCEEDED