Daily Dispatch

What we are up against

THE motive for killing Raymond Mhlaba municipality council speaker Thozama Njobe is not yet clear, but the attack that claimed her life has features that suggest it may be politically linked.

First is that Njobe was well recognised for her strong stance against corruption. Even opposition party members have saluted her for this.

Second, the execution-style killing was clearly the work of a trained marksman who made very sure Njobe did not emerge alive. Njobe was driving from a meeting at Fort Beaufort late on Monday night when the gunman struck. He did so with neat accuracy, pumping six shots into her upper torso, killing her instantly, but leaving the passenger seated next to her unscathed.

Third, a few weeks earlier Njobe received credible information of an assassination plot against her. She reported this to both the police and the ANC’s Eastern Cape secretary, Oscar Mabuyane.

Fourth, the political landscape in which the 46-year-old ANC Amathole regional executive committee member was operating is toxic, awash with death and threats of it.

At least 60 people – political figures, government officials, including auditors, and even community activists – have been the victims of political killings in various parts of South Africa in recent years.

Add to this is the growing phenomenon of death threats, particularly against people with authority who oppose corruption.

This is evident at the highest levels of government, including parliament.

Just this week police protection was finally granted to the ANC MP Dr Makhosi Khoza who has been outspoken about the abuses of state resources by President Jacob Zuma’s family and his cronies.

The now axed CEO of Sassa, Thokozani Magwaza, also recently received death threats. Until his abrupt exit announced on Tuesday, Magwaza was driving the process to shift social grant disbursement from Cash Paymaster Services to the SA Post Office. A KPMG audit shows that CPS’s overseas holding company, Net1, maintained a 12.2% profit margin on the disbursal of South Africa’s 17 million social grants.

Former Social Development director-general, Zane Dangor, also received death threats in relation to this contract. So how do all of these things fit together? Speaking on Mandela Day, Save SA’s Sipho Pityana, was clear: corruption at the highest levels of power has filtered through to almost every part of the state.

Anti-corruption activists were “threatening livelihoods, incomes and lifestyles of many people – starting with the Zuma and Gupta families, but extending deep down into many aspects of the state”, he said.

“We are disrupting ugly networks of international criminal syndicates … We are up against a global network of criminals who have turned SA into their playground and ATM, and who do not like the thought that this is going to come to an end one day.

“They have massive resources – all of it stolen from the state and the poor. They have access to the levers of power. Their own blackshirts and networks of desperate people prepared to do anything to get access to money and power,” he said.

“As a result, we are seeing a slide towards low intensity civil conflict, with the assassination of political representatives and threats against those who speak out.

“We dare not under-estimate what we are up against,” he said.