Ex-Bodyguard for Winnie Mandela Guilty in Slaying : South Africa: The wife of black leader Nelson Mandela was implicated in the beating of an activist youth in her house. He was later found dead.

The leader of Winnie Mandela’s former retinue of young bodyguards was convicted Friday of murdering a 14-year-old anti-apartheid activist last year following beatings in which Mandela has been implicated but not charged.

Judge Brian O’Donovan also found Jerry Richardson, 41, guilty of abducting the victim and three other young men from a Methodist halfway house in Soweto on Dec. 29, 1988, and beating them at Winnie Mandela’s home.

Richardson, coach of the Mandela United soccer club, had “played a leading role” in the subsequent death of Stompie Seipei, the district court judge ruled in Johannesburg.

Prosecutors say they are still considering whether to charge Winnie Mandela. Witnesses, including the three men abducted, testified during the three-week trial that she had interrogated them and beaten them. She left the room before the most severe beatings began, the witnesses said.

The body of Stompie Seipei, whom Richardson and Winnie Mandela had accused of being a police informant, was found in a vacant lot in Soweto in mid-January, 1989. An autopsy showed that he had been severely beaten and that three neck stab wounds caused his death. The other three activists were released after community leaders intervened with Mandela.

Shortly after the incident, Winnie Mandela, who has fought police harassment, banning orders and detention most of her life, was publicly censured by anti-apartheid leaders for refusing to disband the soccer team.

At the time, some members of the team, who doubled as her bodyguards, lived in quarters in her home. Soweto residents had complained often to community leaders about the team’s behavior.

Since the release from prison of her husband, anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, on Feb. 11, Winnie Mandela has kept a low political profile. The movement’s leaders, out of respect for her husband’s stature, have begun to repair their rift with her.

Nelson Mandela, 71-year-old deputy president of the African National Congress, complained earlier this week that the government is unfairly tarnishing his wife’s reputation. She cannot defend herself against the accusations unless the government brings charges against her, he added.

However, the government has pinned its hopes for black-white negotiations on Nelson Mandela, whom President Frederik W. de Klerk considers a reasonable leader, and it is unlikely that prosecutors will charge his wife.

(Winnie Mandela, acting on her lawyers’ advice, declined to testify in Richardson’s trial because of the possibility that she might later be charged.)

Judge O’Donovan, who set sentencing for August, said the evidence clearly indicated that she was present for some of the beatings. He said he did not believe Richardson, who denied killing Seipei.

Testimony in the trial indicated that Richardson and several other members of the soccer club, some of whom await trial on lesser charges, abducted Seipei and the three others and drove them to Winnie Mandela’s house. Richardson accused all the men of sexual liaisons with the pastor who ran the halfway house, and he accused Seipei of being a police informant.

Mrs. Mandela later said the men were taken from the church house to protect them from the pastor’s advances. In his ruling, the judge said there was no credible evidence of sexual misconduct by the pastor.

One of those abducted, Kenny Kgase, 31, testified that Winnie Mandela entered the room and began angrily questioning them. Then, Kgase said, she asked for a sjambok, a short whip, and delivered a few blows to both Kgase and Seipei.