Power, money: suspected political hits surge ahead of S.Africa polls

Gunmen opened fire on local government candidate Khethelo Mdluli outside his rural home as he was with his young children, one of a surge of suspected political assassinations ahead of South Africa's polls next month.

The 40-year-old died in hospital at the end of August, with his family telling AFP they did not know why he was targeted.

"My brother was not a violent man," said the family representative, Sifiso Mdluli.

Mdluli was running as a ward councillor for the veteran Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in the November 4 local elections, seen as a test of support for the African National Congress (ANC) after it lost its national parliamentary majority in 2024.

"One of his IFP colleagues, who was speaking at the funeral, said he had alerted them that there were people threatening him in the days leading to his murder," his brother said.

The day after Mdluli died, another IFP ward council candidate was gunned down in broad daylight after arriving home in the same province, the politically volatile KwaZulu-Natal.

"He was a good man. We are scared," said a relative of 34-year-old Lucky Sokhela who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals.

The party called a special Political Killings Task Team (PKTT), established in 2018, to investigate.

"The killing of political candidates cannot be treated as ordinary criminality," it said. "Let the ballot, not the bullet, decide."

In a new killing this week also referred to the PKTT, four members of the ANC youth division died after a gunman opened fire on them on Tuesday outside Johannesburg.

The motive was unknown and the attacker had turned himself in, police said.

A tender, ward, job

At least 43 people were killed in 45 suspected political attacks in the first nine months of this year, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC).

The African National Congress is South Africa's largest political party. By EMMANUEL CROSET (AFP/File)

The tally topped the full-year total of 30 for 2021, the year of the previous municipal elections, and 33 in 2024, when the last national election was held, the independent civil society group said in a report.

The targets included ward councillors, party officials or traditional leaders -- figures with influence over local issues such as the allocation of houses and contracts.

"The focus shifted from ideological divides to contestation over access to resources," said researcher Crispin Hemson, who documented KwaZulu-Natal's bloody political wars in the final years of apartheid.

"The market for killing, the networks, the guns, they were already there. Now the ideology is gone and the motive is a tender, a ward, a job," he told AFP.

The trial of two men sentenced to life imprisonment in September for the 2023 murder of KwaZulu-Natal Democratic Alliance councillor Nhlalayenza Ndlovu heard the hit was ordered by a traditional chief over disputed land sales and electricity connections.

- 'Kill or be killed'

A ward councillor's job comes with a salary of more than 25,000 rand ($1,500) a month before allowances, according to government figures.

The official national unemployment rate is 33 percent and the minimum wage is nearly 6,000 rand.

"The struggle for employment is such that many people see being a councillor as escaping poverty," said Zakhele Ndlovu, political analyst and lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

"Hence there is such competition for councillor posts, with others prepared to kill or be killed in pursuance of this position."

The liberal Democratic Alliance is the second-largest party in South Africa's fragile coalition government. By MZINGENKOSI SIBANDA (AFP/File)

Most of the attacks (16) recorded by GI-TOC to the end of September were in KwaZulu-Natal but there were also 10 in Gauteng, where Johannesburg is situated.

Of several political movements affected, most of those killed (13) were from the ANC followed by eight from former president Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), based in KwaZulu-Natal.

"Quite a few of these killings speak to the criminalisation of politics, particularly at a local government level, where it's about contestation for access to power and the money that comes with it," the author of the GI-TOC report "Ballots and bullets", Julian Rademeyer, told AFP.

There is an "intersection between politics and organised crime" that "damages the constitutional democracy that South Africa is", GI-TOC executive director Mark Shaw told a public hearing in September.