Acting Western Cape High Court Judge Patrick Ntobeko Maqubela, who was found dead in his Bantry Bay apartment last week at the age of 60, commanded an Umkhonto weSizwe unit until being arrested and sentenced to 20 years in jail, in 1982. He came to prominence several years ago when Mo Shaik and Mac Maharaj alleged that the then head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Bulelani Ngcuka, had betrayed him to the security police.
Maqubela blew their allegation out of the water, saying they knew very well who had shopped him , and it was not Ngcuka. Maqubela was born in Qumbu in the Transkei, on March 30 1949. While at school he joined the Black Consciousness-aligned SA Students Organisation. He read law at Fort Hare university but was expelled for political activities. He was articled to Griffiths Mxenge, the Durban-based human rights lawyer who was assassinated by a police hit squad in 1981. In Umkhonto weSizwe, Maqubela’s unit, which planted bombs at targets such as an army recruitment centre in Durban, answered to Zweli Nyanda, brother of the current minister of telecommunications, Siphiwe Nyanda. Zweli Nyanda was killed when a squad under the command of Eugene de Kock raided the house where he was staying in Swaziland.
The man Maqubela suspected of betraying him was staying in the same house but vanished shortly before the raid. He was subsequently detained by the ANC in Lusaka before “committing suicide”. During his imprisonment, Maqubela was called “the godfather” by cellmates arrested with him because he was older than they were and had an air of authority and calming influence at a time when they thought they were going to be hanged.
After being released in 1991, he became the director of the SA Legal and Defence Fund until it folded in 1994. He served as legal adviser to several politicians, and SA Airways. He was made an acting judge last year. Maqubela is survived by his wife, Thandi, and five children.
Source: The Times
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