Lawyer Links Winnie Mandela to Beating of 4

A lawyer for three black men said today his clients have told him Winnie Mandela was “involved in the events” when they and a friend were abducted from a church home and beaten by her unofficial bodyguards.

The statement by prominent anti-apartheid lawyer Geoff Budlender came one day after a newspaper reported that Mandela, the wife of jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, took part in the alleged beatings.

One of the four, 14-year-old Stompie Seipei, has been missing since Jan. 1 and is feared dead.

Winnie Mandela, 54, has denied the accusations contained in the Sunday Star, a Johannesburg newspaper that opposes apartheid. She has implied they were fabricated to hurt her husband.

Later today, an attorney who had been acting for her, Krish Naidoo, announced that he had resigned as her representative. He did not give a reason when reached by telephone.

However, the Star quoted him today as saying “I felt it was not within the scope of my work to deal with the Mandela crisis.”

The three black men, who are considering legal action, gave Budlender statements about what happened to them but have not authorized him to release details, he said.

The men, aged 20 to 29, were released from Winnie Mandela’s home after intervention by community leaders.

Budlender said his clients “say they were abducted . . . and they were all assaulted on the first night. They say she (Winnie Mandela) was involved in the events on the first night. They say Stompie was removed from them a day or two afterward and they never saw him again.”

Mrs. Mandela has denied that she was at her home when the bodyguards, known as the Mandela United soccer club, brought the four there. She has said they were taken from the Methodist Church house to protect them from sexual abuse, a charge the church said it has investigated and found false.

Community leaders in Soweto, a black township outside Johannesburg, and officials of the Methodist Church have accused the soccer club of abducting and beating the four last month.

The Citizen, a Johannesburg daily, quoted Zindzi Mandela as saying her mother would hold a news conference after visiting Nelson Mandela, who is held at a house on a prison farm near Cape Town.

An aide in Winnie Mandela’s office said she would hold a news conference Wednesday.

Zindzi Mandela was quoted as saying her mother planned to sue the Star and the Weekly Mail, an anti-apartheid newspaper that reported Friday that the body of Stompie Seipei had been found.

Police have been unable to confirm that report.

The Star said one of the four escaped from Winnie Mandela’s house and alerted community leaders meeting at a nearby Methodist church.

A well-known anti-apartheid physician, Dr. Abu Baker Asvat, went to the house, saw the beaten males “and warned that Stompie had been so badly assaulted that he would not live,” the newspaper said.

The next day, Asvat was slain at his Soweto clinic by two young men pretending to be patients.