The African National Congress leader, Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was yesterday accused of interfering with witnesses on the sixth day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearing into allegations of human rights abuses - including murder - against her. The accusation, made by a TRC commissioner, Mr Hanif Vally, drew a sharp response from Ms Madikizela-Mandela's lawyer, Mr Ismail Semenya. He challenged Mr Vally to charge his client in a court of law.
Mr Vally's accusation was given dramatic emphasis when six young men wearing ANC guerrilla uniforms burst into the hearing just as two witnesses were expected to give testimony linking Ms Madikizela-Mandela to the murder in January 1989 of a Soweto-based doctor, Abu-Baker Asvat. They interrupted proceedings for 20 minutes, one of them, Mr Umkhonto we Sizwe, identifying himself as a former member of the ANC guerrilla army who was "interested in" the hearing. He denied that he was a supporter of Ms Madikizela-Mandela's but was later heard singing songs praising her. A lawyer at the hearing told the hearing that he had received a number of death threats. The lawyer represented a prisoner who had earlier claimed that he and another prisoner had been hired by Ms Madikizela-Mandela to murder Asvat. She allegedly gave them the murder weapon to carry out the killing.
The two prisoners, Zakhele Mbatha and Thulani Dlamini, were convicted of Asvat's murder. Under oath yesterday Mbatha repeated his claim about being hired by Ms Madikizela-Mandela. Asvat was murdered after he had allegedly refused to certify that young men had been sodomised by the clergyman in charge of the Methodist manse in Soweto. Ms Madikizela-Mandela insisted that four manse residents - a teenage boy and three young men - had not been kidnapped but had come voluntarily to her house for protection from the attentions of the clergyman.
It was widely anticipated in media circles that yesterday's session would provide evidence linking Ms Madikizela-Mandela to the Asvat murder. The anticipation was that Ms Albertina Sisulu, the wife of the ANC veteran, Mr Walter Sisulu, would make the connection.
Ms Sisulu worked for Asvat as a nurse and receptionist at his Soweto surgery at the time of his death. She reportedly filled in a medical card recording that on December 30th, 1988, Asvat had examined a young man who had lived at the manse. She is believed to have witnessed a quarrel in the surgery between Asvat and Ms Madikizela-Mandela on the same day - proving, it is claimed, that Ms Madikizela-Mandela was not in Brandfort that day as she claimed during her trial for kidnapping.
However, in her testimony yesterday Ms Sisulu denied that the handwriting on the card was hers, apparently contradicting a documentary film in which she is heard to confirm that the handwriting was hers. In an intervention which had observers straining forward on their chairs, the TRC investigations head, Dumisa Ntsebeza, told Ms Sisulu flatly: "My impression is that you are trying your very best to say as little as possible implicate Mrs Mandela."
A visibly upset Ms Sisulu replied: "Even if I'm shielding Mrs Mandela, I came here not to tell lies. I gave my evidence under oath to speak the truth of what I know. I do not think it would be proper to come and tell lies here."
The hearing continues today but Ms Madikizela-Mandela is not expected to testify until tomorrow.