Political killings ‘similar to the 1980s’
THE ANC in KwaZulu-Natal believes the killing of its public representatives could be the result of “sponsored violence” similar to that experienced in the 1980s.
ANC provincial secretary Super Zuma said the violence could be meant to use KwaZulu-Natal as an “entry point” towards destabilising the country.
Zuma said such possibilities would be investigated by one of the two task teams established by the provincial leadership, as the party tries to get to the root cause of the violence in the province.
The other task team will focus on political education, he said.
“We are of the view that there seem to be deeper things that we are not dealing with.”
Zuma said the ANC was not conclusively saying there is a third force element at work, but wants that aspect to be investigated. He said with the recent killings there were patterns which mirrored those of the violence of the 1980s.
“It is not just violence, these are assassinations by well trained people,” he said.
But violence monitor Vanessa Burger scoffed at the claims, saying the talk of a third force was just a smokescreen and an insult to the public’s intelligence.
“Which external elements would want to destabilise South Africa, starting with KZN, when our own political ‘leaders’ have done an excellent job of that already?”
She said the political conflict in the province was all about power, positions and access to resources.
“The ANC is devouring itself and anyone who interrupts the feeding frenzy gets a bullet in KZN,” she said.
The ANC would not say who will be part of the task team, but that members of the team were members of the leadership. Zuma said in some cases members of the ANC were comfortable giving information to the party’s leadership.
Lizette Lancaster, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, said political killings could not be looked at in isolation from how South Africa has generally dealt with conflict.
“There is clearly a culture among some people to get rid of opponents, often for political reasons. All our research shows that in terms of just general political violence there are often hotspots, a type of modus operandi, whether it is political conflict, strike action or vigilantism,” she said.
Looking at the political killings in KZN, Lancaster said with good crime intelligence it was difficult to comprehend how the role players are not known by law enforcement.
Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said he was beefing up the extraordinary measures already put in place to deal with the violence.
An integrated provincial project task team consisting of the Hawks, the detective service, crime intelligence, the local criminal records centre and the National Prosecuting Authority was announced by Mbalula in May to deal with political killings.
Members of the Public Order Policing Unit, the Tactical Response Team, the National Intervention Unit and Visible Policing were also deployed in some of the hotspots.
Despite this, the killings have continued.
“We are working hard to follow up leads and arrest the perpetrators of violence to clean them out of the province,” Mbalula said.
He added that key to rooting out violence was an intelligence network, which he said had the capacity to deal with the murders and had also been intensified.