Johannesburg - African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Ace Magashule will on Wednesday hand over the renovated family home of the late teenage activist Stompie Seipei in Parys, Free State.
''This follows the undertaking made to the family during mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s mourning period [in April]. Significantly, the handover coincides with mama Winnie's birthday, who would have turned 82,'' the party said in a statement.
Magashule visited Stompie's mother, Joyce Seipei in April in the wake of Madikizela-Mandela's death. The young political activist was murdered in 1989, with Madikizela-Mandela blamed for the brutal killing. Jerry Richardson, then coach of Mandela Football Club, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997 that Madikizela-Mandela ordered the killing of Seipei, whose body was discovered near the struggle icon's home in Soweto. However, former police commissioner George Fivaz said an investigation conducted into Stompie's death found that Richardson's allegations against Madikizela-Mandela were false.
During her visit to Madikizela-Mandela's Soweto home in April, Joyce told journalists that the struggle icon had nothing to do with her son's murder.
Meanwhile, the Brandfort home of Madikizela-Mandela remains dilapidated, despite the millions of rand budgeted over the years to revamp the home. Brandfort is a two-hour drive from Parys and lies 50 km outside of Bloemfontein. The struggle icon was banished by the apartheid regime to Brandfort in 1977 for eight years. So far, only a barbed wire fence has been erected around the property and millions of rand, allocated since 2005, to turn the house into a museum remain unaccounted for.
Magashule, a former Free State premier, earlier this year denied embezzlement of funds and said the museum project ''has always been an engagement'' between the family and government.
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