MK party member dropped home dead, stiff and without tongue

A former member of the ANC’s erstwhile Self Defence Unit, who ditched the MK Military Veteran’s Association to join Umkhonto Wesizwe Party last year, was found dead on Monday with his throat, tongue ripped out and his facial skin peeled off.

Patrick “Madurka” Ndlela, 55, was found by his nephew Ntokozo Ngubo, 26, in his backyard cottage on Barwa Street in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, on Monday. 

His right eye was gouged out while the left one was severed to the extent that it popped out of the eye socket, the family revealed.

There was no blood on his clothes or on the bed he was found lying on inside his flat. 

Patrick Mbatha, 54, Madurka’s cousin, believes he was first stripped naked, butchered, then put in a seated position inside a chest freezer to stop bleeding before he was dressed and driven back to his home.

Mbatha said: “The people who did this are professionals. I looked at my cousin; he was in his bed dressed in the clothes he was last seen in by the family on Saturday. There was no blood, meaning he was killed and mutilated elsewhere and driven here.”

Mbatha added that Madurka’s lifeless body was shaped in a seated position.  

“Although he was lying on his back in his bed, his legs were up and arms positioned as if he was sitting down on the floor.

"I believe that he was placed inside a freezer to dry, dressed up and then brought here at home.

"From the waist down he was very cold, wet and icy which fuels my suspicion that he was frozen to stop the bleeding. He was like a frozen chicken,” Mbatha added.

He said he was still haunted by flashbacks of his cousin’s body.  

"I am struggling to cope with this,” said Mbatha. 

Describing how the family was coping with the trauma, Madurka's sister Nomthandazo Kubheka, 47, said: “We have three minor children here in the house. They haven’t played outside ever since the gruesome discovery. 

"They are always in the house.”  

Madurka was last seen by prison officials on Sunday morning when they came to monitor him in line with his parole conditions.

At the time of his murder, Madurka was under community supervision serving a sentence for crimes he committed during the early 90s, which according to his party comrades, are linked to the Struggle.

In the 1980s Madurka gained infamy by participating in the assaults meted out on alleged apartheid collaborators and suspected criminals in Daveyton,

He dismissed claims that Madurka died of natural causes.  

Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Mavela Masondo said police have opened an inquest docket for investigation.

 “We cannot comment about missing body parts, but a postmortem was conducted to establish the cause of death.

"The results will be taken to the family, and it will be up to them to challenge the results,” said Masondo. 

During an interview at his home which he shared with his siblings and his mother, the family believed the people behind the brutality were professionals. 

Deputy regional coordinator of MK Party in Ekurhuleni Solly Bongani Makwakwa, who was Madurka’s longtime friend and comrade, said it was a hate crime to make a statement.

“ They killed him elsewhere, and mutilated his body, and then put his clothes back on and placed him at his home to be found. Madurka was at the forefront of the fight against apartheid and crime,” said Makwakwa.