Battle over slain judge’s ‘forged’ R20m will

The son of murdered Acting Judge Patrick Maqubela is locked in a legal wrangle to have his father’s last will and testament – an allegedly fraudulent document that splits up the judge’s R20 million estate – declared invalid.

Maqubela’s widow, Thandi, is alleged to have forged the will. She is on trial with co-accused Vela Mabena, charged with murdering her husband who was suffocated in his Bantry Bay flat on June 5, 2009. He was an acting judge in the Western Cape High Court.

It emerged in court yesterday that the contentious document excluded Patrick Maqubela’s adult children from a previous marriage – Duma and Patiwe – from inheriting his estate.

However, the document included Thandi Maqubela’s daughter from a previous relationship, Sfundiseni, 30.

Her husband had never legally adopted Sfundiseni, however.

Duma had taken legal action challenging the validity of the will. This was according to testimony by staff members of the office of the Master of the South Gauteng High Court, who had dealt with Maqubela’s estate after his murder.

Wendy Sithole, then assistant Master of the South Gauteng High Court, said Sfundiseni was not only included in the will, but also listed as the alternate executrix, should her mother die. And, while Maqubela From Page 1

stood to gain millions as a result of the will, the three children included as heirs – the two children from her marriage to Maqubela, and Sfundiseni – would have had to split a Johannesburg property worth R1m.

Sithole testified that on her husband’s death certificate Thandi Maqubela had stated that he had died intestate.

After she was arrested for murder on March 28, 2010, Sithole had told Maqubela that she would have to remove her as executrix of her husband’s estate unless she could come up with R20m in security.

Maqubela had not presented the security and Sithole had removed her as executrix on April 21, 2010.

But Sithole said just a few days later Maqubela had contacted her, saying that she had found her husband’s will. With a will citing Maqubela as executrix, security was not required.

Another State witness, Tarisai Shamu, an attorney for Telfer and Associates, hired by Thandi Maqubela as agents, testified that Maqubela had contacted her on the very night she was removed as executrix of her husband’s estate.

Maqubela had sent Shamu an SMS late at night saying she had found her husband’s purported will. Sithole and former Master of the South Gauteng High Court, Lester Basson, both testified that the surfacing of the will had a big impact on who benefited from Patrick Maqubela’s estate and how it was divided.

Maqubela’s estate is worth about R20m, but Basson said after liabilities the beneficiaries would receive about R12m. If Maqubela had died intestate, his wife would have received about half of this because the couple had been married in community of property. The remaining amount would have been split between the five children.

However, with a will in place, Maqubela was set to inherit about R11m and the three children listed in the will would receive the rest – a property worth R1m. Those children who were in the will were receiving roughly a quarter of what they would have had their father died intestate, he said, and the other two were “worse” off because they would get nothing.

Basson said Duma Maqubela had called him and raised “serious concerns” over the will because he felt his father would not have disinherited him. “He seriously doubted whether it was his father’s signature (on the will).”

Not long after the will emerged in late April, he had been contacted by the investigating officer regarding the will. The document had been analysed at a forensic lab in Cape Town in May 2010, to establish its authenticity.

Basson said shortly after the analysis, forgery had been added to Maqubela’s charge sheet. He said he would also have to monitor the case because if this action “comes to nought”, he might have to bring an application challenging the validity of the document.

The trial continues today. - Cape Times

leila.samodien@inl.co.za