South Africa Decline and Fall of a Heroine

By Bruce W. Nelan

When Winnie Mandela defied the government's orders and returned to Soweto from banishment in the Orange Free State three years ago, she was hailed by millions of her fellow South Africans as the Mother of the Nation. Idolized by the township's teenagers, she was carried on their shoulders into political funerals and was constantly surrounded on the streets by dancing youngsters chanting "Man-del-a, Man-del-a." To much of the outside world she became the grande dame of the South African revolution, a worthy surrogate for her husband Nelson, the imprisoned black nationalist leader. But Winnie, 52, was a strong, willful person who said and did what she liked. She stirred resentment by ignoring the counsel of other black leaders and the policies of antiapartheid organizations.

That resentment inevitably turned to anger, and last week Winnie Mandela was publicly read out of the antiapartheid movement. At a press conference in Johannesburg, the two largest black antigovernment organizations, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the banned United Democratic Front, charged that she had "violated the spirit and ethos of the democratic movement" and called on the black community to "distance" itself from her. Though less critical, the exiled leadership of the African National Congress (A.N.C.) in Lusaka said Mandela had made mistakes. Murphy Morobe, a U.D.F. spokesman, said the organizations were particularly outraged "by the reign of terror" conducted by the so-called Mandela United Football Club, a gang of street toughs who live at Mandela's house and act as her bodyguards. The catalyst for her tragic fall: Mandela and her "team" are at the center of a police investigation involving three murders.

The Mandela football team and youth groups from Soweto schools have been fighting hit-and-run battles for more than two years, and residents of the neighborhood have accused team members of everything from rape to car theft. In late December the gang abducted four young men from a Methodist Church refuge, took them to Mandela's house and beat them repeatedly. One of the youngsters escaped; the team released two others after 2 1/2 weeks; and the body of the fourth, a 14-year-old named Stompie Mokhetsi, was located last week in a mortuary where it had lain unidentified for more than five weeks. It bore stab wounds in the throat. Meanwhile, a football-team member, Maxwell Madondo, 19, was found hacked to death in Soweto.

( Mandela claims that the three youths were taken from the church refuge only to protect them from sexual abuse by the white minister, an accusation that the Methodist Church leadership dismisses as a smoke screen. She insists that the abuse would have been confirmed in court by her physician, Dr. Abu-Baker Asvat, but he was shot to death in his office late last month by two men posing as patients. According to Johannesburg's Sunday Star, however, Dr. Asvat examined the captives at the Mandela house and could have testified that they had been savagely beaten.

Mandela also says her football team was disbanded years ago, though she continues to appear in public with young men wearing the team's track suits of green, yellow and black, the colors of the outlawed A.N.C. Last week's press conference statement read, "Not only is Mrs. Mandela associated with the team, but in fact the team is her own creation."

Just before dawn on Sunday, police raided the Mandela household. They dusted for fingerprints, carried away boxes of clothing, whips and clubs for forensic tests and detained 14 members for questioning.

The rift between Mandela and her Soweto supporters has a long history. They frowned when she built a luxurious new house, nicknamed "Winnie's Palace." The A.N.C. and U.D.F. disavowed her comments in favor of "necklacing" -- hanging gasoline-filled tires around the necks of blacks accused of "collaborating with the system," then igniting them. Soweto civic groups and A.N.C. officials asked repeatedly that the football team be broken up to halt its thuggery. In February 1987 students from a local high school who had been warring with the team stoned the Mandela house, and last July they fire- bombed it.

After conferring with her husband at Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town last week, Mandela canceled a planned press conference. Three days later, Mandela reportedly agreed to remove the bodyguards from her home. But the decision left unexplained whether she had been oblivious to the misdeeds of her football team or had encouraged them. Through most of her husband's 26- year imprisonment, Winnie Mandela seemed a true heroine, undiminished by loneliness, police harassment, detention and banishment. Now, even to old friends, she is a mystery.