Three gunmen open fire on ANC door-to-door campaigners in Umgababa, killing two
Two party members were declared dead at the scene and three attempted murder counts have been opened after the shooting south of Durban, with volunteers now saying they are afraid to keep campaigning.
Two ANC members were shot dead and a third person was wounded in Umgababa, south of Durban, on Thursday while supporters were conducting door-to-door campaigning for an ANC Women’s League programme.
Three unknown men opened fire on the group. A man and a woman were declared dead at the scene. A woman injured her leg while fleeing, according to KwaZulu-Natal police, who have opened two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. Two bodyguards who had been with the campaigners fled the scene and have not been found.
As eNCA reported on 15 October, the eThekwini regional convenor Thabani Nyawose said the motive for the shooting was still unclear but that he believed the group’s coordinator may have been the target.
“Our coordinator was targeted. At this point in time, we don’t know what the motive was. But we hope that police will investigate this,” Nyawose said. He added that ANC volunteers are now scared and that campaigning in the area will be difficult from today.
Nyawose said political parties should be able to campaign freely in all wards without fear or intimidation, and called on police to follow up, investigate and arrest those responsible. He said the party has many questions about what happened.
Police have not named a suspect and have not confirmed a motive. Authorities said they cannot rule out a political motive for the shooting.
The killings land in the middle of the municipal campaign season in KwaZulu-Natal, where door-to-door work is the standard method of building support in wards that are decided by small margins. The ANC Women’s League programme that the group was running is a volunteer structure, meaning the people knocking on doors are party members rather than professional security details or full-time organisers.
That is part of what makes Thursday’s shooting consequential beyond the two deaths. Volunteer campaigning depends on residents opening their doors to strangers who are known in the area. When volunteers say they are afraid to continue, the effect is felt first in the ward that loses its campaign and then in the wider party structure that has to decide whether to send anyone back.
Umgababa sits on the South Coast within eThekwini metro, a stretch of the municipality where political competition between the ANC, the IFP and newer formations has been sharp in recent cycles. KwaZulu-Natal has a long record of political killings, and the pattern in those cases has usually been that arrests follow slowly and prosecutions take years, if they are brought at all.
The police case now rests on the two murder counts, the three attempted murder counts and whatever the investigation into the three gunmen produces. No arrests have been announced. The bodyguards who left the scene have not been located, and police have not said whether they are being sought as witnesses or for any other reason.
For the residents of Umgababa, the immediate effect is a campaign that has stopped where it was supposed to be happening, and questions about who was shooting and why that remain open.
