Key Mandela Figures Won’t Testify : South Africa: Pair say they fear for their lives. Judge is asked to compel them to give testimony in kidnaping trial of ANC leader’s wife.

Two young black men who claim that they were beaten by Winnie Mandela two years ago took the witness stand here Wednesday but refused to testify, saying that their lives would be in danger.

“I’ve got to make a decision between my obligation (to testify) and my life,” one of the witnesses, Kenneth Kgase, told Judge Michael S. Stegmann. “I really want my life. I like my life.”

Kgase, 31, and Thabiso Mono, 21, said that their fears stem from the abduction of Gabriel Mekgwe, another key prosecution witness, on Sunday night. Before that, they said, they had been frightened but had been willing to testify.

“If people can remove someone who has been subpoenaed, when the case is going on, then . . . I am very, very scared,” Kgase said.

Prosecutor Jan Swanepoel asked Judge Stegmann to compel the men to testify, arguing that “their fear is not unlike that witnesses suffer in other cases,” such as those arising from gang wars or black factional fighting.

But Paul Kennedy, the men’s attorney, said that his clients had “an objectively well-founded fear of death or bodily harm” and should be excused from testifying. Even putting the men in protective custody during the proceedings would not ease their fears, he added, because “this trial may be remembered for a long time to come.”

Under South African law, the judge may either compel witnesses to testify under threat of imprisonment or rule that they have a “just excuse” for not testifying. Stegmann said that he would announce his decision in court this morning.

The dramatic developments in the trial this week, beginning with the abduction and disappearance of Mekgwe, have seriously hampered the state’s case against Mandela, the 56-year-old wife of Nelson Mandela, deputy president of the African National Congress.

She and three co-defendants are charged with four counts each of kidnaping and assault in the Dec. 28, 1988, abduction and beating of Kgase, Mono, Mekgwe and 14-year-old Stompie Seipei. Seipei’s body was found later in a Soweto field. He had been severely beaten and had died of stab wounds.

Winnie Mandela contends that she was out of town at the time.

Prosecutor Swanepoel told the judge Wednesday that it would be a waste of time to present the state’s forensic and medical witnesses without the testimony of the three men who were allegedly beaten by Mrs. Mandela and her followers.

Kgase, Mono and Mekgwe testified last year in the murder trial of Jerry Richardson, the former leader of the Mandela United soccer team, whose members served as Mrs. Mandela’s bodyguards. The witnesses said that they were taken from a Methodist Church halfway house in Soweto by Richardson and others in Mrs. Mandela’s van.

Each witness said that Mandela then instigated the beatings at her Soweto house, using a whip and her fists. Kgase testified that she told them: “You are not fit to be alive.” When Mandela left the room, they testified, Richardson and others took over the beatings. Richardson was sentenced to death for the murder of Seipei.

“Our case rests on the three complainants,” Swanepoel said. But he added that he understands the witnesses’ reluctance to testify. “I have sympathy” for them, he said.

Much has changed in the country since the 1988 incident. The ANC now has legal status and Mandela’s husband, revered by blacks nationwide, has been freed from prison. Two of the three key prosecution witnesses, Mono and Mekgwe, have joined the ANC.

All three men were worried about testifying against the wife of Nelson Mandela. As Kgase entered the courtroom Wednesday, he looked nervously into the public gallery, where Nelson Mandela has a front-row seat.

The three witnesses had rejected state offers to place them in protective custody. The resolve of the other two about testifying evaporated on Sunday night when they learned that Mekgwe had been kidnaped from a church halfway house in Soweto and was missing.

Kgase and Mono said Wednesday that they would be willing to testify if Mekgwe reappears and has not been harmed. The South African Press Assn. reported that a man identifying himself as Mekgwe telephoned it from neighboring Zimbabwe, saying that he was afraid to return to South Africa and testify.

The ANC has said that it did not, as an organization, have anything to do with Mekgwe’s disappearance. But many in Soweto, where Mrs. Mandela’s followers were known for their strong-arm tactics, are suspicious.

In the past, Soweto residents who have spoken out against Winnie Mandela have been assaulted and journalists who have written stories unfavorable to her have been threatened.