7
The assassination of Noby Ngombane
When Noby Nyovo Ngombane returned to his native Free State in
1998 after a stint abroad, the province was as politically volatile and
fractured as it had been since the 1980 s. Ace Magashule had become
the ANC’s chairperson in August of that year, but the province was
being run by Premier Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, the ‘outsider’ backed by
the national leadership of Nelson Mandela and loathed by Magashule
and his band of northerners.
Ngombane and his wife, Nokwanda, had spent a few years in
Sweden, where he had worked as a programme officer at the
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Upon
his return to South Africa, he stepped into the Free State’s political fray
by taking up positions that would inevitably mark him as an enemy in
the eyes of the Magashule faction.
Ngombane first served as a special advisor to Matsepe-Casaburri
before assuming the same role in the office of Winkie Direko, yet
another so-called outsider whom the national leadership had picked to
become premier ahead of Magashule. Then, in 2000 , the national
leadership plucked Ngombane from the proverbial frying pan and
dropped him into the fire below by putting him in charge of the ANC’s
Interim Leadership Committee (ILC). This was the structure put in
place after the dissolution of Magashule’s PEC amid the unsustainable
political volatility and infighting in the Free State.
Nokwanda told me her husband had been somewhat surprised when