Cape Town - Convicted killer Thandi Maqubela was a cold step-mother who sought to divide the family, the Western Cape High Court heard on Thursday.
“She played a role of causing divisions, my lord,” said murdered acting judge Patrick Maqubela's son Duma, who was called to testify as a State witness in aggravation of sentence.
Prosecutor Bonnie Currie-Gamwo called Duma because he had flown in from the Eastern Cape for the day.
She would cross-examine social worker Arina Smit, who was called as a defence witness on Wednesday, at a later stage.
Duma Maqubela and his dead brother were born of a marriage between Patrick Maqubela and his mother between 1977 and 1979.
They divorced around 1982 because of infidelity on his part, and Thandi and Patrick Maqubela later married.
Duma said it was a “well-known fact” in the family that Thandi was known in Xhosa as “long, red nails” because she refused to take up a helping role and did not want to ruin her nails by peeling vegetables. He believed she viewed herself as above the family.
Duma lived with his father in Johannesburg for two years until Thandi and her daughters moved in with them in 2002.
He said Thandi made sure they did not have much of a relationship and he believed she treated him differently to her daughters.
He moved out five months into the new living arrangement without telling his father.
“On that day I left, she was sitting at the dining room table and I had packed all my belongings. The only thing she asked me was: 'Are you coming back?'“ he told the court.
“My answer was no. She said okay. I only informed my father after I left because I knew he would have stopped me.”
Last November, the same court found Maqubela guilty of killing her husband in June 2009, despite not having conclusive medical evidence pinpointing a cause of death.
She was found guilty of forging her husband's will and committing fraud by causing potential prejudice to his estate.
Duma said Thandi Maqubela continued to sow divisions by interfering with the winding up of the estate, after his dad died intestate.
He said Maqubela, through her new attorneys, was objecting to the execution of his estate on the grounds that Patrick's daughter from another marriage, Patiwe Singapi, was not in fact his daughter.
“We see it as nothing more than a ploy to frustrate us further because we don't know what the objection is about,” Duma said.
Thomas Tyler, for Maqubela, placed it on record during cross-examination that he preferred not to refer to the estate for now and that his failure to talk about it was not an omission.
Sapa