Political assassinations in post-apartheid South Africa


There have been a number of political assassinations in post-apartheid South Africa. In 2013 it was reported that there had been more than 450 political assassinations in the province of KwaZulu-Natal since the end of apartheid in 1994. In July 2013 the Daily Maverick reported that there had been "59 political murders in the last five years". In August 2016 it was reported that there had been at least twenty political assassinations in the run up to the local government elections on the 3rd of August that year, most of them in KwaZulu-Natal.
Political assassinations have often been ascribed to battles around patronage within the ruling African National Congress. However, not all assassinations are a result of conflict within the ruling party. The National Freedom Party led by Zanele Magwaza-Msibi, with its base largely in KwaZulu-Natal, claims that 21 of its members have been killed since the party was founded in early 2011. The Inkatha Freedom Party claims that ten of its elected representatives have been murdered. In June 2013 Abahlali baseMjondolo, an autonomous shack dwellers' movement in Durban, claimed that the murder of Nkululeko Gwala, a local leader in the organisation, was a political assassination. In May 2016 two ANC councillors were convicted of murder following the assassination of Thuli Ndlovu, also a local leader in Abahlali baseMjondolo.
According to Raymond Suttner "assassinations have become a regularised way of deciding on leadership and access to wealth within the ANC and its allies". In 2016 the ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe said: "The reality is that selection of candidates for council is always a life-and-death issue. But assassinations are only the most extreme tip of the iceberg of violence that surrounds South African elections. David Bruce published an extensive report on the 2014 election pointing to the subtle and complex ways in which the ANC intimidates its political rivals. In the run up to the 2014 election the Independent Electoral Commission did little to intervene to prevent violence, the abuse of government rescources and the use of the state run media to favour the ruling party.
In recent years South Africa has also seen the rise of the professional assassin. Professor Mark Shaw and Kim Thomas of the University of Cape Town produced a paper ‘The commercialisation of assassination: hits and contract killing in South Africa, 2000-2015.’ Thomas and Shaw used the media to build a database of individual hits or attempted hits over a 16-year period. They recorded just over 1 000 individual cases of assassination or attempted assassination. By no means all were political. ‘Where there is a cross-over between the involvement of state and criminal actors in perpetrating such violence, or cooperating in ways that facilitate violent outcomes, the position is particularly serious,’ says Professor Shaw.

Location of assassinations

It has been argued that the situation is particularly bad in the provinces of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal with KwaZulu-Natal being, by far, the worst. KwaZulu-Natal has been described as the "epicenter of political violence" while Mpumalanga has been described as "notorious for political assassinations" Fourteen assassinations have been documented in Mpumalanga and 450 in KwaZulu-Natal. It has been reported that "Since the beginning of 2011, the murder of people with high political profiles has been confined almost exclusively to KwaZulu-Natal, with 27 in the province since February 2011. According to the ANC 38 of its members have been assassinated in KwaZulu-Natal since the beginning of 2011. It has been suggested that support for murders in the taxi industry in KwaZulu-Natal by leading figures in the ruling party legitimated the use of violence in the democratic era which then spilled over into the political sphere.

Conviction rates and a possible 'licence to kill'

There has been one conviction in response to the fourteen assassinations in Mpumalanga and four in KwaZulu-Natal for forty two assassinations leading one researcher to conclude that some people are starting to believe there may be a "general licence for political killings" but that "this may only be available to people in certain political positions".

List of politicians assassinated in post-Apartheid South Africa