Durban - While some student leaders face the prospect of spending Christmas behind bars, one of their former leaders who made Durban’s Westville campus ungovernable in the early 2000s is set to spend his sixth Christmas behind bars.
However, it won’t be for student protests, but rather his conviction for two murders that will keep Muziwokuthula “Muzi” Madondo behind bars in the US state of New Mexico.
According to officials in Ohio, he is unlikely to be moved any time soon from the Penitentiary of New Mexico near Santa Fe to Ohio, where he faces a further two charges of murder and a potential death sentence.
“I suppose we are in no rush to get him here. He’s not going anywhere soon,” said James Pollack, spokesperson for the Summit County prosecutor’s office.
Madondo, who led student protests over the canteen food at the then University of Durban-Westville (UDW) before its merger with the University of Natal in 2004, pleaded guilty in December 2015 to gunning down father and son Bobby Gonzales, 57, and Gabriel Baca, 37, in a motel in Tucumcari in New Mexico. It is a crime for which he will have to serve at least 24 years before being eligible for parole.
A case for extraditing Madondo from New Mexico to Ohio has yet to be presented to a grand jury.
Madondo, who was student representative council president at the then UDW, is alleged to have killed First Merit Bank executive Jacquelyn Hilder in Akron, Ohio, which is in Summit County.
Hilder died in her home from two gunshots to the chest and abdomen on the night of February 17, 2011. Two days later, the bullet-riddled body of a Maritzburg College old boy, Zenzele Mdadane, was found in a forest some 300km away in Butler Township near Dayton, Ohio.
Unlike New Mexico, Ohio has the death penalty.
During his arrest and initial detention in the Texas town of Conroe in March 2011, Madondo confessed not only to the murders of Gonzales and Baca, but also apparently to those of Hilder and Mdadane.
Madondo succeeded earlier last year in getting the Supreme Court of New Mexico to rule that his rights were violated when the confession was taken.
The court ruled that a jury should not hear the confession, but then, less than two months before he was due to stand trial, Madondo pleaded guilty to the Tucumcari killings.
Speaking shortly before Madondo’s sentencing in December last year, District Attorney Tim Rose said Madondo had admitted to killing Hilder with the purpose of “getting money”.
“He travelled from Akron for the sole purpose of committing the murder of Mdadane. He said it was cold-blooded and premeditated. He wanted some retribution for some acts that Mdadane had done to him in the past.”
Madondo, from Richmond near Pietermaritzburg, admitted in his videotaped confession to stripping Mdadane of his clothing so that he would not be identified. Madondo used Mdadane’s identification to open a bank account and lease an apartment.
The confession will be the subject of a court battle when Madondo is eventually extradited to Ohio.
African News Agency