Durban — Investigations by the task team on political killings revealed that the most affected political parties are the ANC, IFP and NFP.
This was shared by Police Minister Bheki Cele during a media briefing on behalf of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on political killings in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday.
Cele said that before the task team’s involvement in politically related cases, the cases simply fell through the cracks.
He said that since the implementation of an integrated multi-disciplinary investigation approach of the task team, eight of KZN’s eleven regions had since stabilised.
“We credit the stability in the regions to the comprehensive work of the task team and the consolidated Security Cluster interventions approved by this committee,” Cele said.
“The eThekwini metropolis remains an area of concern, and the focus is now in this region to bring much-needed stability.”
Cele said that the IMC was encouraged that interventions were in place to deal with all forms of politically related crimes, proactively and reactively in the eThekwini and in the Zululand District.
“Investigations of the political killings by the task team have revealed that the most affected political parties are the ANC, IFP and NFP,” Cele said.
“Of the 52 murder cases of councillors, 31 ANC councillors were killed while 14 were from the IFP. The NFP lost four of its councillors while the EFF and ACDP lost two and one respectively. While 52 councillors have been gunned down since 2011 to date. Alarmingly, 103 officials working within municipalities as political office bearers and officials in political offices were killed.”
Touching on what could be the motives behind these killings, Cele said that causative factors for these crimes were linked to intra-political conflicts with a few cases linked to other motives such as taxi violence, domestic-related issues, business competition and traditional leadership competition as well as family feud.
“Murder cases that were reported before the 2016 and 2021 local government elections were mainly a result of fighting over councillors' positions; where candidate councillors were eliminated.
“The majority of the murder cases reported after the 2016 and 2021 local government elections were associated with infightings within structures and municipalities over positions.”
Cele added that violent competition between business forums over community development projects or tenders was also noted as a possible motive.
“Moreover, seemingly, there are pockets of society, where the barrel of the gun, and not through negotiations, decides coalitions.
“An investigation by the task team has revealed that current tensions within and between political parties (inter and intra) are due to the unstable coalition governance,” Cele said.
Reacting to the ANC, IFP and NFP being the most affected political parties, KZN South African Local Government Association chairperson Thami Ntuli said that they needed to find solutions to curb this scourge.
Ntuli said that the Moerane Commission was during the time of former KZN premier Willies Mchunu.
“We have not seen the implementation of these recommendations,” Ntuli said. “What could be the solution?”
Ntuli said that it was good that the minister acknowledged the issue of political killings, but what was different from SAPS?
Cele added that some of their work was entailed in the Moerane Commission and some was not, but they were not going to stop and they did not stop even before Moerane.
“There are several things that were suggested by Moerane, maybe those that commissioned it may give an answer, but from our side, we are satisfied.”
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