his work in the politically volatile province. ‘Let us not beat around the
bush when it is said that this murder is a mystery whose motives are
unclear,’ she declared. ‘We are talking about a political killing.’^11
Marshoff was more reserved, saying they needed to give the
authorities room to probe the murder. She said she felt it was
insensitive to speculate about the motivation behind Ngombane’s
death.^12 But if Marshoff did not believe that the murder was politically
motivated then, she would soon receive information that would make
her seriously entertain the possibility.
What follows is Marshoff’s account of her interactions with an
intelligence operative who brought her some troubling news not long
after Ngombane’s death. Marshoff would later tell this tale under oath
at a judicial inquiry into the murder. Mysteriously, all of the court
documents related to the inquiry seem to have disappeared. At the
time, this evidence was heard behind closed doors, so the details about
her encounters with the spook are revealed here for the first time, with
her consent.
‘After Noby’s funeral a comrade came to see me,’ Marshoff told me in
August 2018. ‘He was working with the National Intelligence Agency
[NIA, which would later be absorbed into the new State Security
Agency] and he said he wanted to share something very sensitive with
me.’
He told her that he had obtained sensitive information about
Ngombane’s death during his intelligence-gathering work; that this
information pointed to the possible involvement of politicians; and that
he had known Ngombane from the struggle days and was keen to get
to the bottom of the murder. ‘He told me that the police will never find