Winnie Mandela Charged With Assault, Kidnaping : South Africa: Seven ex-bodyguards will also be tried. The chief guard is sentenced to die for killing one victim.

Winnie Mandela, the fiery and controversial wife of the African National Congress leader, will be tried on charges of kidnaping and assault in the December, 1988, beatings of four young black men at her Soweto home, authorities said Tuesday.

Klaus von Lieres, attorney general for the Johannesburg district, said he decided to file the charges “because of my duty . . . to uphold and apply the law to all alike.”

Mandela, 54, will stand trial with seven members of her former retinue of bodyguards. The leader of those bodyguards, Jerry Richardson, already has been sentenced to death in the murder of one of the four victims, 14-year-old Stompie Seipei.

The decision to charge Mandela could hamper ongoing peace talks between the government and the ANC and strain the feeling of mutual respect between President Frederik W. de Klerk and ANC Deputy President Nelson Mandela that has been largely responsible for the success of the talks thus far, political analysts say.

It also may create tensions within the anti-apartheid ANC, where radical young blacks who strongly support Winnie Mandela are at odds with more moderate activists who have been privately critical of her. The executive committee recently appointed Winnie Mandela, who has been married to Nelson Mandela for 31 years, to head the ANC’s social welfare department.

The ANC’s secretary general, Alfred Nzo, said Tuesday that the organization is not seeking “any special treatment for Comrade Winnie Mandela.” But he protested the media’s reporting of the allegations, saying they have “lost no opportunity to create the impression she is guilty.”

He said the ANC’s national executive committee, which is holding a two-day emergency meeting on the current wave of violence in black townships, “wishes to affirm its unequivocal support for our deputy president and his family in this time of stress.”

Winnie Mandela’s attorney, Ismail Ayob, said neither he nor his client would comment on the charges. In previous interviews with The Times, Winnie Mandela has said the accusations were a government attempt to discredit her husband.

She is scheduled to appear in court Monday and she has not been arrested.

The charges stem from the Dec. 29, 1988, abduction of Seipei and three other young men from a Methodist halfway house in Soweto, the sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. The three survivors have testified that bodyguard leader Richardson, 41, and three other men took them to Winnie Mandela’s home.

She confronted the four victims at the house, accusing Seipei of being a police spy and the others of having been sexually molested by the pastor who runs the church home, according to the testimony. While she questioned them, she hit each of them with her hands and with a rubber whip known as a sjambok . At one point, she told Seipei: “You are not fit to be alive,” the survivors have testified.

She later left the room and did not participate in the more brutal beatings, which were led by Richardson, according to the three men.

Two days later, Seipei was taken from the house, the men testified, and they never saw him again. His body was found in a Soweto field on Jan. 7, 1989. An autopsy showed that he had been severely beaten and that three stab wounds to the neck caused his death. The three other young men were released after community leaders intervened with Winnie Mandela.

She will be tried on four counts of kidnaping and four counts of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, the attorney general said. The judge in Richardson’s murder trial last May said the evidence clearly indicated that she was present for some of the beatings. And no evidence was presented to indicate that Seipei was a police informant.

Judges in South Africa have wide latitude in assessing penalties in criminal trials. A charge of kidnaping could carry the death penalty, but such a sentence is rare, and jail terms can be as short as five years. Sentences in assault cases, depending on the type of weapon used and other circumstances, could range from a fine to a short prison sentence.

The three survivors of the abduction will be the chief witnesses in the case. The attorney general warned Tuesday that “any attempt . . . to either directly or indirectly intimidate or interfere with any of the witnesses will unhesitatingly be dealt with (by) the fullest vigor the law can command.”

Journalists and community leaders in recent years have been harassed and threatened by Winnie Mandela’s supporters for stories or public statements seen as critical of her.

In his statement, Von Lieres pointed out that many South Africans, including Nelson and Winnie Mandela, have complained that she was being unjustly accused by testimony at Richardson’s murder trial without the opportunity to defend herself.

“They don’t want to charge her and give her the opportunity of proving she is innocent,” Nelson Mandela told a news conference in May. “My wife’s whole reputation is being smashed without her having the opportunity to reply.” (Winnie Mandela, acting on her lawyer’s advice, had declined to testify in Richardson’s trial.)

Von Lieres noted that, while in the United States, Winnie Mandela was reported to have said that “she would welcome being charged in the murder of Stompie . . . so that she could appear in court to defend herself.” But the attorney general said his decision to prosecute her was not a response to those remarks.

Shortly after Seipei’s death, Winnie Mandela, who had fought police harassment, banning orders and detention throughout her husband’s 27 years in jail, was publicly denounced by anti-apartheid leaders for refusing to disband her team of bodyguards, known as the Mandela United soccer club. Soweto residents had complained often to community leaders about the guards’ behavior.