Mandela Case: Key Test for Her White Lawyer : South Africa: Her fate in kidnaping and assault trial rests largely on the duel between the black accuser and her attorney.

For four grueling days, a stocky, silver-haired lawyer stood in court with his hands on his hips and his long, black robe swept behind him. He often glanced from side to side, a look of exasperation plainly evident on his face.

“Why,” George Bizos asked the witness, Kenneth Kgase, “do you find it necessary to lie, Mr. Kgase? Why do you lie?”

“I have no answer,” said Kgase, speaking softly and glancing nervously from Bizos to the judge.

“I’m going to suggest to you, Mr. Kgase, that you have something to hide,” Bizos added.

During 20 hours of testimony, which ended Tuesday, the government’s star witness against Winnie Mandela was questioned mercilessly by the defense in Courtroom 4E of the Rand Supreme Court.

Mandela’s fate will rest in large part on that duel between her black accuser and her veteran white trial lawyer, conducted beneath the gaze of the deciding judge, Michael S. Stegmann.

Bizos ridiculed the witness, frequently raising his voice and attacking Kgase’s general character and truthfulness. He homed in on apparent inconsistencies between Kgase’s sworn affidavit, his testimony in a previous trial, his statements to reporters and his testimony against Mandela.

“I’m surprised you still have a smile on your face,” Bizos said as the questioning drew to a close Tuesday.

Kgase replied: “What am I supposed to do with you shouting at me? . . . You get carried away.”

But when the questioning was over, Bizos hadn’t been able to completely shake Kgase’s story--that Winnie Mandela’s associates kidnaped him and three other men in December, 1988, and took them to the Mandela home where she beat them with her fists and a whip while keeping them captive.

Kgase was followed onto the stand Tuesday by a second alleged victim of the assaults, Thabiso Mono. Thus far, Mono has corroborated Kgase’s version of the abduction and beatings. But he faces a similar round of extensive cross-examination by lawyers representing Mandela and her three co-defendants.

“My job is not to judge,” Bizos said during a break in the trial this week. “My job is just to ask questions.”

At cross-examination, Bizos has no equal in South African jurisprudence. His sonorous baritone helped defend Nelson Mandela in 1963, sparing him from a death sentence in the famous Rivonia treason trial. Since then Bizos has defended Mandela’s wife at least two dozen times against charges leveled by the state.

But this time Winnie Mandela is charged with common crimes--kidnaping and assault. And the case is severely testing the skills of Mandela’s high-powered team of civil rights lawyers, who are being paid by overseas anti-apartheid organizations.

Kgase, a 31-year-old aspiring writer, testified that he and the other three men were beaten first by Winnie Mandela and, later, by her associates. At one point, he said, she told the men: “You are not fit to be alive.”

Kgase said Mandela had accused three of the men of being sexually abused by the pastor who runs the Methodist halfway house where they were staying. A fourth, 14-year-old Stompie Seipei, was accused by Mandela of being a police spy, according to Kgase.

Stompie’s body was found several weeks after the alleged beatings. A coroner said the youth had been stabbed in the neck and severely beaten.

Mandela contends she was out of town when the incidents occurred.

Last Thursday, Bizos launched a careful, well-researched attempt to undo the damage of Kgase’s testimony by attacking the witness’ credibility.

When Kgase testified that he had begun his writing career in 1988, Bizos produced a handwritten note from Kgase to a publisher. It was dated 1987. Kgase was forced to admit that he had begun his writing career earlier.

Then Bizos attacked Kgase’s claim that he had written, by himself, a first-person article that appeared in the London Sunday Telegraph last summer, detailing his allegations against Winnie Mandela.

The lawyer produced Kgase’s novel manuscript, written in longhand and entitled “Roots--Poor Man Dies,” and ordered him to read from it. After the embarrassed witness read a paragraph, Bizos suggested that it was something less than sterling prose.

“What does that mean?” Bizos demanded to know.

“I don’t know,” Kgase responded.

“They’re just words?” Bizos said.

“Yes,” Kgase replied.

Then Judge Stegmann gently scolded Bizos. “Is literary criticism really relevant here?” he asked the lawyer. “In the 1920s, if something like this had been done with James Joyce, there would have been people who would have regarded it as difficult to understand,” the judge added.

On Tuesday, Bizos turned his attention to statements Kgase made in an affidavit, which was later turned over to the police. In the affidavit, Kgase had said Mandela accused him of being a police spy. Bizos pointed out that Kgase had not mentioned that in court.

Kgase also said in his statement that Mandela’s followers were singing and chanting shortly before she began the alleged assault. But he had denied that in court.

“Why don’t you come out and say you told a pack of lies?” Bizos said. But Kgase wouldn’t take the bait.

“There are a lot of inconsistencies,” Kgase admitted. But he said that so much had happened during the assault that he could not recall all the details all of the time.

“There are too many things (that happened),” he said. “Some of them I remember while I’m here, others I don’t. There’s nothing I made up.”