/ 22 September 2009

Secrecy shrouds Maqubela murder

Western Cape police investigators have wrapped up their investigation into the murder of ANC struggle hero and acting judge Patrick Ntobeko Maqubela, but have thrown a veil of secrecy over possible arrests. ‘We have received the case docket and the matter is under consideration by the National Prosecuting Authority,” said acting NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga.

Maqubela was found dead in bed in his Bantry Bay flat on Sunday June 7 by fellow acting judge Jake Moloi. The Mail & Guardian has reported on startling inconsistencies in the police version of his death, including a bizarre initial pronouncement that he had died of a ‘severe heart attack”.

The mystery surrounding the motive for murder is still unsolved. ‘The strange thing is that no will has been found,” a family member said. ‘But he was meticulous about everything — so why would he have left this matter unattended?”

Maqubela, who died leaving an estate valued at between R15-million and R20-million, is said to have taken out a life insurance policy worth about R20-million.

Friends and family mentioned as relevant the fact that Maqubela had been hospitalised after being attacked with an axe during a domestic dispute in 1981. He recuperated at home for months, they claimed, but laid no charges.

Thandi, his girlfriend at the time, is now his wife. The couple married in community of property. When he moved to Cape Town to take up the post of acting judge in the Cape High Court he spoke to those close to him of his desire to file for divorce and of his happiness with a new love in his life.

Thandi who was living with her husband during the week of his death, is said to have visited justice minister Jeff Radebe the day before her husband was killed, allegedly to give him reasons why Maqubela was unfit to be a judge.

The Maqubelas received a mystery visitor, who was captured on camera as he went up to their flat at around 11am on June 5, the day police believe the judge was murdered. The police, who have repeatedly said there are no suspects, have questioned his wife and the unidentified man. ‘This thing [the death] is still under investigation and I don’t think I have any comment,” Thandi said this week.

Commenting on the fact that a bottle of whisky and hypertension tablets were found beside Maqubela’s bed when his body was discovered, a former MK operative who spoke to Maqubela on the phone every day said his friend did not drink heavily and a recent medical test had shown his blood pressure had not been high.

‘He was a really fit man,” he said, asking not to be named. ‘He would never lie around on his bed drinking and was meticulous in his habits.”

Maqubela served nine years of a 20-year sentence for high treason and later played an important role in the Hefer Commission in 2003, where he contradicted claims that former prosecutions chief Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy.