Jostling for attention: IFP and NFP billboards compete for space.
Jailed former KwaZulu-Natal prison head Russel Ngubo – serving a 25-year sentence for the assassination of an IFP leader in the Midlands – has been released on parole.
Ngubo, a former ANC Donnybrook branch chairperson and the one-time boss of the Pietermaritzburg New Prison, was released on Monday.
Ngubo’s parole terms are not known as yet, but department of correctional services (DCS) spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo confirmed his release on Tuesday.
‘’I can confirm that he was released yesterday,’’ Nxumalo said in response to questions from Mail & Guardian. Nxumalo declined to provide detail of Ngubo’s parole conditions.
Ngubo was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2005 for the 1998 killing of IFP induna Ernest Nzimande during a lengthy conflict between the IFP and ANC in the Donnybrook and Impendle areas. Ngubo was jailed along with a group of fellow correctional services staff members for the killing in which they used a department kombi and weapons. Ngubo is serving a concurrent sentence for the murder of IFP leader Nash Ngubane and for defeating the ends of justice by interfering with witnesses during his trial.
Ngubo, who had the rank of deputy director in the DCS at the time he was jailed, also had the reputation of being one of the ANC’s most feared warlords in the Midlands. The party remained in a bloody, low-intensity war with the IFP for several years after the 1994 elections, with Ngubo and several of his colleagues he was jailed with taking part in attacks on their political rivals at local level.
Ngubo’s home had been attacked and his brother killed in an ambush, in which four SAPS dog unit members who were investigating a murder at Impendle were also shot dead. Ngubo had been shot and wounded in the arm with an R5 rifle by the IFP while he was organising for the ANC in Stoffelton in 1994.
He was jailed along with DCS officials Nhlanhla Ndumo and Thami Memela and his bodyguard, Thulani Xaba.
Their arrest for the 1998 murders came amid pressure on the then Scorpions after the Jali Commission into corruption in prison in 2002 heard claims that DCS officials were involved in political killings.
Before he was jailed, he and other members of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) were part of ‘’Operation Quiet Storm’’ through which they took control of the administration of DCS.
In 2002 he was allegedly behind the removal from office of provincial DCS commissioner Thandiwe Kgosidintsi, who was forced out of her office by Popcru members. Ngubo was suspended over the incident but returned to work.
During his incarceration, Ngubo was at the centre of a series of claims that he was receiving preferential treatment and was involved in a number of clashes with prison management.
Shortly after Ngubo was jailed he went on hunger strike to try and force DCS to give him access to medical treatment in an outside hospital. At the time he claimed that members of the DCS Emergency Support Team at Westville Prison were trying to kill him.
In January this year, Ngubo was transferred from the Sevontein Prison near New Hanover to C-Max after he allegedly assaulted a pregnant female warder. However, Ngubo is understood to have been brought back from C-Max after he went to the High Court for an order returning him to the normal prison population.