Court told of phone calls to dead man

The trial of Thandi Maqubela, the businesswoman accused of killing her judge husband, resumed in the Cape Town High Court yesterday after a seven-month delay.

Prosecutors tried to prove that Maqubela carried acting judge Patrick Maqubela's cellphone on her while travelling across four provinces, sending SMSs and using it to call the dead judge.

The judge's body was found slumped in his bed in an upmarket flat in Sea Point, Cape Town, on June 7 2009.

Maqubela and former pastor Vela Mabhena are charged with his murder. Maqubela is also charged with forging the acting judge's signature on a will purporting to name her as the main beneficiary of his estate.

The accused have both pleaded not guilty.

The trial has been beset by delays. Last week it was postponed because Maqubela's lawyer, Marius Broeksma, had flu.

The court subpoenaed cellphone network company Vodacom for Maqubela's cellphone records from January to 31 July 2009.

Petra Heynecke, an information systems manager at Vodacom, said Maqubela and Mabhena called each other and exchanged messages days before the acting judge's death.

She said cellphone usage showed that Maqubela had travelled between Eastern Cape, Durban and Johannesburg, and that she was in Cape Town on June 3 2009.

Heynecke testified that both the acting judge's cellphone and Maqubela's were traced to Butterworth on the day he died and that she had called his phone. The records show Maqubela arrived in Cape Town the following day.

Broeksma said there was nothing unusual about the calls and SMSs because Maqubela and Mabhena knew each other and she was married to the judge.

But prosecutor Pedro van Wyk said establishing the time of the communications between the two was important for the state's case.

Judge John Murphy allowed the state to proceed with Heynecke's testimony.