Thandabantu David Ntombela: IFP’s bloodthirsty ‘warlord No 1’ 1925-2018
Alleged mastermind of KZN’s Seven-Day War ruled ruthlessly in his fiefdom
● Thandabantu David Ntombela, who has died at his home in Elandskop, Pietermaritzburg, at the age of 93, was a highranking IFP official and one of the most feared and powerful warlords in the Pietermaritzburg region in the 1980s and 1990s.
During this period a civil war raged between Inkatha and United Democratic Front/Cosatu forces loyal to the ANC.
He was a long-standing member of the IFP national council. From 1989 to 1994 he was a member of the KwaZulu legislative assembly, and from 1994 till his retirement in 2007 was a member of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.
He became induna, or headman, in Vulindlela in the midlands in 1976, and was the Inkatha branch chairman in the area, which he treated as his fiefdom.
His almost legendary reputation was founded on years of laying down the law, issuing ultimatums and dealing ruthlessly with infringements.
Security police agent
He relied not only on personal firepower — he was never without a loaded gun — but on a solid tribal power base built up over years.
This, and police protection, gave him an aura of invulnerability.
In 1996 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony from policemen about his links with the Pietermaritzburg riot unit.
It also emerged in the late 1990s that he was a security police agent, as was his ANC/UDF counterpart, an equally murderous warlord, Sifiso Nkabinde, who met a bloody end in the 1990s.
At one stage both were being handled by the same policeman.
The IFP said that although Ntombela cooperated with the police as an induna in his area, “that relationship was very different from being a registered government agent”.
Killing sprees
Ntombela blamed his bloody reputation on “lies and propaganda”, but numerous carefully collated reports, affidavits and Supreme Court interdicts instructing him to refrain from killing and intimidating told another story.
Testimony at the TRC fingered him for leading or provoking a number of killing sprees in the midlands.
None was bloodier than the so-called “Seven-Day War”, which, according to testimony at the TRC, was planned and launched from his Elandskop stronghold and raged in the midlands from March 25 to 31 1990, leaving at least 80 people dead and 20,000 homeless.
A provocative speech he made at an Inkatha rally at Durban’s Kings Park
Stadium on March 25 was believed to have triggered the war.
In testimony at the TRC he was accused of planning and leading attacks on those regarded as UDF supporters.
He himself refused to testify.
Ntombela tolerated no UDF activity in his fiefdom and made it clear he was committed to cleansing the area of UDF support.
Shot a girl of 11 in her sleep
One night in October 1987 he, his brother and six other men went to the homestead of Angelica Mkhize, looking for her sons who were members of a local youth group affiliated to the UDF.
When they couldn’t find them, Ntombela, according to an eyewitness account, shot her with a handgun as she stood next to her door. His men shot her sleeping 11-year-old daughter, Petronella, and abducted and killed a family friend.
Ntombela and his accomplices were arrested and released on bail of R100 each. The police investigation dried up and the family approached Cosatu lawyers, who brought an interdict application against him which was granted by the Supreme Court.
Almost 18 months later, in March 1989, the magistrate presiding over the inquest into the murders found Ntombela and those with him responsible for the deaths. He referred the matter to the attorney-general but Ntombela was never prosecuted.
Carried a gun in court
In January 1988 he told an Inkatha rally that anyone who refused to join Inkatha must be killed.
Shortly afterwards, at an inquest into the deaths of three Cosatu supporters in Mpophomeni township in 1986, at the magistrate’s court in Howick, counsel for families of the deceased informed the magistrate that Ntombela, who was sitting near the witness box, was carrying a gun.
He was taken outside and disarmed. Four other guns carried by Inkatha members in the public gallery were confiscated.
At the time he was out on bail for the Mkhize murders and had been named as a respondent in two interdict applications brought by Cosatu on charges of murder and attempted murder, but no action was taken against him.
Ntombela was born on February 11 1925 in Nhlosana, near Dargle in the midlands.
He left school after completing standard 6 and worked as a salesman for Dunlop.
Ntombela was a man with a limp handshake but a large personality. He made it chillingly clear to those who met him that he was someone to be taken very seriously.
He survived several attempts on his life. His house was petrol-bombed and he claimed to have been attacked on various other occasions by UDF people, but each time saw his attackers off.
‘They know I got fight’
“They know I got fight,” he told one interviewer, showing off his gun.
He was known and greatly feared as “Inkatha warlord No 1”, a title he took a certain pride in.
“That’s what they call me,” he would smirk. “Warlord No 1.”
People called him “a bad man”, he said, which he denied.
“I would be in jail several times if I was a bad man.”
People “put it out” that he was a “killer”, but he was “a good man”, he said. “For God.”
He is survived by five children. One of his original 11 children, his son Drake, was killed in the violence. Two wives predeceased him.
People ‘put it out’ that he was a ‘killer’, but he was ‘a good man’, he said. ‘For God’