Police have finally made a breakthrough into the mysterious death of Western Cape High Court Acting Judge Patrick Maqubela, nine months after he died.

Investigators swooped on the home of his 55-year-old wife, Thandi, in Sandton "during the early hours" of yesterday morning.

Maqubela's body was found in his upmarket apartment in Sea Point, Cape Town, in June last year.

Maqubela's cousin, Sithembele Somyalo, said he was relieved that someone was "finally arrested for his death". "Now the law should take its course. His death didn't make sense. I heard about the arrest on the radio. We always suspected that there was something sinister about his death," Somyalo said.

At the time of Maqubela's death, police announced that he had died of a "severe heart attack" and an inquest docket was opened.

His friend, Acting Judge Jake Moloi, questioned the heart attack theory.

"To me it was very strange that he was lying on his back ... the sheets covered his feet and his face, but there was a pillow on his face. And it was covered in blood - just like his face," Moloi said at the time.

A case of murder was opened after a postmortem could not accurately determine the cause of his death.

Last year police said "the procedure was hampered by the state of decomposition of the body organs".

Shortly after that, two top Western Cape detectives were assigned to the case. Reynold Talmakkies, who successfully investigated the murder of nine men at the Sizzlers massage parlour in 2003, was one investigator. Superintendent Jo Dryden, who solved the murder of musician Taliep Peterson, for which his wife Najwa was convicted, was the other detective.

Police spokesman Superintendent Andre Traut said the suspect - whom he would not name as Maqubela's wife - had been detained and willappear in the Cape Town Magistrate's Court on Monday.

Maqubela was a former Robben Island detainee. He worked as an advocate in Johannesburg before he was asked to serve as an acting judge on the Cape bench in 2008.

By BBC