Even the short notes made by Bishop Storey after he was debriefed by Mr Mogoba betray the sadness of the encounter

Even the short notes made by Bishop Storey after he was debriefed by Mr Mogoba betray the sadness of the encounter. When they were finally released two weeks later, Stompie was missing. He was later found on wasteland with his throat slit.Yesterday Bishop Storey described how the church and the community tried to persuade Mrs Mandela to let the boys go. Every effort was “stonewalled”.For the first time Bishop Storey released contemporaneous notes of a message he sent to Mandela. This week, the boys said Mrs Mandela threatened they would die if they did not make false allegations against the minister After their abduction they were beaten for three days. For he also condemned the ANC for trying to cover up Mrs Mandela’s guilt. An ANC Crisis Committee, he said, had been primarily interested in damage limitation.Some activists had been brave enough to distance themselves from Mrs Mandela.

“If only other members of the movement had had the courage that they had we would not be sitting here today,” said Bishop Storey. The TRC, which must expose the atrocities of the apartheid era, has heard that Stompie – and three older youths – were abducted from the Soweto manse of the Rev Paul Verryn (now a Methodist bishop), where they had saught sanctuary from the security police. They were taken by the notorious Mandela United Football Club, Mrs Mandela’s personal bodyguard which terrorised Soweto.Mrs Mandela claimed Mr Verryn was sexually abusing the boys and that Stompie was a police informer. The murder of Stompie, he said, was about more than the killing of a child. “It is about the ruthless abuse of power, and it resembles much too closely the abuses of the apartheid system itself.” He said that truth was too often “trimmed to political winds or suppressed because people have vanished or feared for their lives”, but he hoped it would finally prevail.Mrs Mandela, standing for deputy leadership of the ANC next month, against the wishes of the leadership, sat stonyfaced. But the bishop’s searing indictment drifted from the hall towards the Johannesburg headquarters of the ANC, a few miles away. Yesterday, however, everyone at the hearing knew who the bishop believed had fallen from grace.

But, with Mrs Madikizela- Mandela sitting just feet away, he argued that “secondary infections” had set in, eroding some people’s sense of good and evil.
Moral collapse was at the centre of the 1988 murder of Stompie Seipei Moeketsi, 14, the township activist Mrs Mandela was found guilty of kidnapping. “It’s possible,” he warned the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, “to become like those that we hate most.”He did not name Mrs Mandela, who was convicted of the kidnapping in 1992, but not of the killing. Apartheid, said Bishop Peter Storey, South Africa’s leading Methodist priest, had been South Africa’s “primary cancer”. It was a blistering attack, and it came from the pulpit. When it ended, a couple of breathtaking, passionate hours later, it seemed that the remains of Winnie Mandela’s credibility had been blown away Mary Braid reports. I’ve worked happily for Verity for eight years and, bearing in mind I have never made a plan in my life, I guess I am unlikely to move.. Fortunately she has a highly effective message system on to which I put all fresh calls, reminders and dates.

Cinema Verity’s standards are high, which to an extent is down to me because I was always taught that every letter, be it from a runner, a casting agent, a literary agent, a crew member etc gets a reply.I think of myself as Verity’s secretary but she never treats me like one. She always introduces me as Anna and often takes me to premieres or a local movie since we are both avid film-goers. I don’t think my job is particularly glamorous, a secretary working for the boss at a widget factory would do more or less the same thing as I do, but I do get to meet the most terrific people. I’m not at all starstruck, but I was excited when Peter O’Toole came to the office during the filming of a PJ Wodehouse.Verity took the office to Paris to celebrate 10 years of the company, and on her birthday I write her a spoof script about the office life called “Postcards from the Hedge” She cried laughing at the last one I wrote. When we are in production I see very little of her because she’s either filming on location or working at a separate production office, but we keep in touch via a mobile. I don’t enjoy being on film sets, you can hardly imagine how boring it is when you don’t have a working role, but when castings are held in our office I can’t help but get involved as I love the process.Organising Verity’s day is my priority, she’s besotted with her electronic diary and she also has a back-up and a desk diary. At that point I realised that I hadn’t given the caterers her address.

Luckily they were able to rush over and save the day.I felt quite bitter during the hard times, particularly when the BBC axed of Eldorado, but I saw how Verity can rise to a challenge without getting at all embittered. She has the personality of a perfectionist and she’s also deeply honest, even the smallest white lie is beyond her Nothing really phases her. When a project is in production she has to write off the rest of her life, but she just gets on with it. I guess not having a family of her own makes it easier, but she thrives on working hard and playing hard. While we were waiting for the caterers to turn up I jokingly asked Verity whether she would fire me if the party was a disaster; she laughed and said “of course not”. We had friends in common and being older and more experienced than my predecessors I didn’t feel daunted by the job.My first impression of Verity was a pair of very black eyes belonging to an utterly charming and striking woman, tall and slim with an excellent dress sense. I joke that she dresses in Armani and I in St Michael, but we share a passion for shoes I call her the Imelda Marcus of Shepherd’s Bush.