First served as a member of the African National Congress (ANC), then turned a counterinsurgent police informer, Ngqulunga was recruited as a constable of the Security Branch in Vlakplaas.
[1][2] When recruited to the police, Ngqulunga first reported to Captain Dirk Coetzee and later to Colonel Eugene de Kock who successively commanded the Vlakplaas counterinsurgent death squad.
[6] On 19 November 1981, Ngqulunga, Mamasela, Coetzee and two other policemen - Almond Nofomela and David Tshikalanga - drove to the home of prominent human rights lawyer and ANC activist Griffiths Mxenge in Umlazi and murdered him, stabbing him 45 times all over his body and slit his throat.
[7] Since its establishment in the 1970s, the Vlakplaas death squad operated as a secretive unit of the South African Police targeting ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) activists and its clandestine inhumane activities were only exposed in 1989 by Nofomela and Coetzee after both fell out with commanders of the police system, shocking revelations that led to public pressure being put on apartheid state President F.W.
[4] The TRC also learnt from other testimonies that since his transfer to head office Ngqulunga had begun making contacts to the African National Congress (ANC) about possible defection or help spill the beans about Griffiths Mxenge's murder and the clandestine operations of the Vlakplaas death squad,[10] as did Almond Nofomela and Dirk Coetzee earlier.