Bishop Peter Storey
The tragic truth about Stompie Seipei
Peter Storey led the Methodist Church of Southern Africa into what many whites saw as uncomfortable ‘political’ territory. He also provided spiritual leadership during some of apartheid’s darkest hours, from tending to Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, through the forced removals of District Six. In this extract he tells of his role in uncovering the truth behind Stompie Seipei’s murder
Like most South Africans I was glued to my television set for many hours as SA bade farewell to Winnie MadikizelaMandela, freedom struggle hero in her own right. As I watched, I felt the sadness of having lost someone I had known and admired at her fearless best, but mixed in with that was anger because of my painful recollection of events when she was at her worst. I was intimately involved in those events, so it was hard to watch one speaker after another either ignore or aggressively deny the dark shadows that they still cast. By the time of her funeral her life story was already being rewritten with every ounce of heroism recalled and every notorious deed airbrushed out. None involved on the day found the moral courage to at least acknowledge her transgressions. Instead, her funeral was a state-sponsored canonisation with serious implications for the truth.
Winnie’s saga was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, which also inflicted deep injury on the ANC. I believe that the movement’s failure to hold her accountable for her offences in the late ’80s and early ’90s marked its first public slide from the moral high ground of the struggle. This woman, who in her prime had stood for an unwavering, almost superhuman resistance to wrong, became a troubling liability. She often said, “I am the product of the masses of my people and also the product of my enemies,” and it may well be that the wounds those enemies inflicted on her soul damaged her irreparably. My engagement with her certainly marked one of the most painful chapters in my life.
Roots in the Methodist Church
We first met in 1985 in Majwemasweu, a bleak reservation for blacks outside the white farming town of Brandfort, where Winnie had languished under official banishment since 1977. Located in the Free State 350km from Johannesburg, her new home might as well have been in a foreign land. The language spoken there was Sesotho, while Winnie was from the Xhosa-speaking Eastern Cape. Winnie’s roots, like those of Nelson, were in the Methodist Church and as leader of the denomination I wanted to bring her some encouragement.
Elizabeth and I were driven from Bloemfontein by the local bishop, Jack Scholtz, and his spouse, Joan, both of whom had offered spiritual and practical care to Winnie since her banishment began. Jack and Joan had had their own problems defending Methodist social principles in conservative Bloemfontein, and right-wingers had once stoned their home.
Arriving in the township, we were joined by the local minister, Themba Mntambo, who had made it possible for her to launch a daycare centre for preschool children in the church building. We drove up to House 802, just another dreary two-room matchbox house typical of black townships across the land. A security police vehicle was parked up the road but we ignored its occupants and walked up the short path. Some flowers planted around the front door were a brave attempt at home-making in the dust. Standing in the doorway with arms spread wide in welcome was a smiling Winnie Mandela.
Winnie was strikingly beautiful. In addition to her intelligence and warmth, in her presence I had no problem understanding why a young Nelson Mandela
‘Peter Storey was beyond phenomenal. He was responsible, as my bishop, and was meticulous in the way he cared for me’ Bishop Paul Verryn, Speaking of the depression he suffered after Stompie Seipei’s abduction and murder, a pain exacerbated by false accusations of sexual abuse. — Source: Zingela Ulwazi podcast with Stella Horgan, June 2018
had become smitten by this fiery woman — and why other men later became entangled with her. During the Brandfort exile reports of alcohol, drugs and men had begun to surface and I sensed that the layers of pain behind the smiling welcome were manifesting in damaging ways. By this time in her life, Winnie had been horribly abused both in and out of jail. Her times of imprisonment were hellish, with long periods of solitary confinement — sometimes completely naked — plus physical and mental torture.
A year after our visit and with typical defiance, Winnie broke her banning order and came home to Soweto. She took up residence again with her daughter Zinzi in the house in Vilakazi Street that she had shared with Nelson before his imprisonment. She dared the authorities to arrest her, but they were hesitant because her bold move coincided with the growing international momentum of the Release Mandela Campaign. All over the world people were demanding that Nelson be set free, and in his absence Winnie, with her Evita-like magnetism, became the obvious pin-up for the campaign.
Her home was seen as an essential stop for visiting dignitaries and diplomats and she was showered with gifts and honours. Somebody coined the title “Mother of the Nation” and the African-American community in the US in particular elevated her to celebrity status. In their eyes Winnie could do no wrong and I would argue that this unqualified adulation added more damage to her psyche on top of all the horrors of police brutality.
Enforcers doing her bidding
Then, fatally, she surrounded herself with a shady group of tough youths nicknamed the “Mandela United Football Club”, who played little soccer. Instead they became Winnie’s enforcers, doing her bidding in Soweto with whatever brutality they thought necessary.
Winnie carried no official position with the underground ANC cadres, but she set herself up as an alternative authority in the area, issuing orders and demanding obedience.
Emma Gilbey describes how Mandela United began to “almost ape” the behaviour of the security police: “Winnie’s boys would burst into a house with much clamour and show of force, before compelling an intended victim into a vehicle and driving him off to a place of interrogation — Winnie’s house. Once there, a mutated form of police questioning would occur, with verbal abuse, kicking, punching, whipping, beating and slapping.
Instead of mock executions at gunpoint, victims would be hung from the ceiling; instead of being hooded or blindfolded, they would have plastic bags placed over their heads, and have their faces shoved in buckets of water. Instead of electric shocks, their flesh would be carved and, as cited in one case, battery acid would be smeared into the wounds. And instead of being dangled out of the window by their ankles they would be thrown high up into the air and left to hit the floor — a practice known as “breakdown”.
Around these activities there was a curtain of silence. Proof of the fear inculcated by the Mandela United thugs was that although I moved in and out of Soweto regularly at the time, I remained unaware of the growing crisis. I saw Winnie from time to
‘Let me say to Mr Botha: apartheid is doomed. It has been condemned in the councils of God, rejected by every nation on the planet and is no longer believed in by the people who gave it birth. Apartheid is the god that has failed’ Bishop Peter Storey In a sermon in 1986