Winnie Mandela Ends Week of Testimony : South Africa: Prosecutors attack her alibi, but she maintains her innocence in the beating of four youths.

Winnie Mandela stepped down from the witness stand Monday after a grueling week of questioning during which she steadfastly maintained her innocence as prosecutors attacked her alibi and suggested it was manufactured more than a year after the crime.

Prosecutor Jan Swanepoel, who cross-examined Mandela for more than three days, raised several questions about Mandela’s defense. She claims she was en route to Brandfort, 150 miles away, when her bodyguards kidnaped four young men from a church house and beat them in her home.

But she had no clear answer when Swanepoel asked why she had not mentioned her alibi in an interview with a Dutch television journalist several weeks after the alleged incident.

“I didn’t tell him because he didn’t ask me that question,” she testified. She acknowledged, though, that she had arranged the interview in hopes of clearing her name, even though her attorneys had urged her to “maintain a dignified silence.”

Under redirect questioning from her own attorney Monday, Mandela said she had been reluctant to mention the alibi because of fears it would create “complications” for the people with whom she had been working on social welfare projects in Brandfort.

Mandela, her driver John Morgan, and an associate, Xoliswa Falati, are charged with four counts each of kidnaping and assault. Two of the four men allegedly abducted and beaten on Dec. 29, 1988, have testified that Mandela personally beat them with a whip and her fists, demanding that they admit to having been sexually abused by the Rev. Paul Verryn, who runs the church halfway house where they were living.

One of those abducted, 14-year-old Stompie Seipei, was killed, and Mandela associate Jerry Richardson was convicted and sentenced to death in that case last year.

Mandela acknowledged in her testimony that she had been concerned about alleged sexual abuse of young men at the Methodist church house in Soweto. She said Falati earlier had brought two other youngsters to her who claimed that Verryn had made sexual advances to them. Mandela said she had reported the allegations to religious leaders and taken one youth to a doctor, who found no physical evidence of sexual assault. Verryn, who runs the halfway house, has been cleared of any misconduct by Methodist church officials.

Falati, who lived at the house for a time, has testified that the four men were being sexually abused by Verryn. Mandela says Falati told her the four were staying in rooms behind her house when she returned from a two-day trip to Brandfort. But she says she did not meet the four and only learned of the allegations of beatings several weeks later from a delegation of community leaders.

Under questioning by Swanepoel, Mandela said she not did attempt to see the young men because she assumed the allegations were false. She maintained that she had little personal contact with the 17 or 18 young men who stayed in rooms behind her home and for whom she provided food.

Two other discrepancies emerged during Mandela’s cross-examination:

* She maintained she was in her minivan en route to Brandfort at the time the men say they were abducted. But Morgan, her co-defendant, told police shortly after the incident that he, Richardson and Falati had used Mandela’s minivan later that same evening to collect the men from the church house.

* She contended she left for Brandfort between 6:30 and 7 p.m. on Dec. 29, 1988, and stayed two nights, meeting with local people on Dec. 30 to discuss welfare projects she had going in the black township. But Swanepoel said her alibi witness, Nora Moahloli, in whose home she stayed, told police two months ago that Mandela had arrived on the night of Dec. 30, not Dec. 29. Moahloli is scheduled to be called as a defense witness.

The trial of Winnie Mandela, wife of African National Congress Deputy President Nelson Mandela, has emerged as a threat not only to the talks between the ANC and the government but to the stability of the liberation organization itself.

Mrs. Mandela has strong support among many of the ANC’s more radical members, and is considered likely to be elected to the National Executive Committee, the ANC’s policy-making body, in June. But she is detested by more moderate members of the ANC and those who remember the activities of her bodyguard retinue, who have complained about her rapid elevation in the ANC.

The United Democratic Front, a giant federation of anti-apartheid organizations, was so concerned about the activities of Winnie Mandela’s bodyguards in 1989 that it took the unprecedented step of ostracizing her from the liberation movement.

Mrs. Mandela lashed out at those leaders during her testimony, calling them “so-called leaders of the community.”

“I found it strange that they were calling themselves community leaders when, in fact, the country had been under a state of emergency and the genuine leaders were in jail,” Mandela said. Her husband and other key ANC figures were released from prison a year later.