Gunmen kill two ANC campaigners in Umgababa, KwaZulu-Natal
Sihle Makhathini, brother of one of the dead, says residents no longer feel safe walking their own streets as police open murder and attempted murder cases.
Two ANC members were shot dead while campaigning door to door in Umgababa, on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, on Thursday, and police have opened two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.
As eNCA reported on 15 October, the dead were a man and a woman declared dead at the scene. A second woman was injured. According to the police statement carried in that report, she hurt her leg while fleeing the shooting. Two bodyguards fled the scene and have not been found.
The brother of one of the dead, Sihle Makhathini, said the victims were out with ANC members conducting door-to-door campaigning when gunmen opened fire. He said that, according to what the community told him, two men got out of a car and began shooting.
“It is very devastating losing someone close to you, it’s even sad when you lose a community member,” he said. “The world we live in now has turned out to be bad.”
He said the killings had renewed safety fears among residents of the area. “We have been losing a lot of community members in different ways and it really sad. We need our community to be safe, to be able to walk around in peace. But its clear that life is gone now.”
Police have not established a motive. Authorities said they cannot rule out a political motive for the shooting.
Umgababa sits on the N2 corridor between Durban and the South Coast, a stretch of KwaZulu-Natal where political killings have been a recurring feature of the run-up to local and provincial contests. Door-to-door canvassing is the most exposed work in South African politics. It puts volunteers and candidates on foot in streets they do not control, at times announced in advance, with no state protection beyond what a party can arrange itself.
That is the detail a reader outside the province will miss. The attack did not happen at a rally behind a stage, where police are deployed and access is screened. It happened while people were walking from house to house.
The two counts of murder and three of attempted murder are the state’s working charges. No arrest has been announced in the material available at the time of writing, and no names of suspects have been released.
What residents are left with is the question Makhathini put to the community’s own safety, and the fact that the people who opened fire got out of a car and drove away.
