also weighed in,’ Marshoff recalled. ‘Ace just sat quietly. He did not
say much.’
According to the former premier, she refused to apologise for
employing Ngombane in her office. ‘Afterwards I asked Noby what he
had done to make those people hate him so much,’ Marshoff said. ‘He
told me I shouldn’t worry about them, I shouldn’t break my head over
those people.’
But Nokwanda said her husband became worried and paranoid. ‘He
would say that “they” wanted to kill him, that he had a gut feeling he
was going to be killed,’ she told me.
There were calls from both sides of the political divide for Ngombane
to be removed, so Nokwanda could never pinpoint exactly who ‘they’
were when her husband spoke about the danger he was facing. ‘He
said it was like he was taking money away from them [because of the
financial restructuring he wanted to implement],’ his wife explained. ‘If
there was one thing that was banding them together, it was the idea
that Noby was a problem and that he needed to go.’
The Ngombanes lived in a spacious home at the end of a cul-de-sac in
the upmarket Bloemfontein suburb of Hillsboro.
On the evening of Tuesday 22 March 2005 , the family was enjoying a
quiet evening. Noby Ngombane had arrived home at about 18 : 30.
When Nokwanda got there a little later, she found several of her
relatives at the house. Her husband had invited her brother Bongani
and her sister Tantaswa, along with two of her cousins, Vuyokazi and
Siphumle, to watch a movie with him. ‘Noby wanted to watch a DVD,
so he called all of them,’ recalled Nokwanda. ‘He was not good with
electronic devices, so he needed someone to help him with the DVD
player.’