Gangster State

quote, but he never got the policy. He consulted with a financial advisor
in January 2005 , but he only got insurance for our house.’ If the police
did indeed source evidence that Nokwanda was due to receive millions
from her husband’s life insurance, the NPA curiously omitted this detail
in the charge sheet it filed only a few months later.
The same City Press article unintentionally highlighted just how
flimsy the ‘evidence’ on which the police based their decision to go
after Nokwanda was: ‘It is understood that her conduct after her
husband’s death led police to consider her as the prime suspect. She
broke with common tradition, firstly by addressing mourners at the
funeral ... secondly she threw a lavish party to mark the end of her
mourning period, which was four months in comparison to the average
12 months.’^18
Although the police had arrested Nokwanda and her relatives, it soon
became apparent that the state did not have much of a case against
them. By September, the NPA had not yet formally charged the five
suspects. ‘[The state] is working full-time and uninterrupted to get the
case trial ready,’ prosecutor Jannie Botha told the magistrate while
arguing for a second postponement.^19 The matter was postponed to
December.
The police, meanwhile, went on a wild and at times bizarre goose
chase while Nokwanda and her co-accused were out on bail. In
October, they exhumed Ngombane’s body after allegedly receiving
information that suggested Nokwanda had hid the gun that killed him
in the coffin. A police spokesperson said there had been ‘reasonable
grounds [to believe] that the murder weapon had been concealed in the
body or coffin of the deceased’. A thorough search of the coffin and an
X-ray of the body, however, revealed no firearm.^20