Durban — The SA Local Government Association (Salga) in KwaZulu-Natal has called on the police to treat the killing of councillors and traditional leaders the same way they treat the murders of police officers.
In a media briefing on Wednesday where Salga unpacked the state of provincial municipalities, it said it was not happy that it always takes police a long time to find the killers of councillors and traditional leaders, adding that sometimes they failed to even arrest the killers.
Salga provincial chairperson Thami Ntuli said he did not understand why police could find police officers’ killers within a short space of time but take a long time to arrest councillors’ and traditional leaders’ killers.
“We are not happy as Salga about how police are dealing with the killing of politicians and traditional leaders in the province. We want them to treat the killings of councillors and traditional leaders the same way they treat their own colleagues. Police make sure they find their colleagues’ killers within a short space of time but fail to do the same for councillors and traditional leaders who are also public servants,” said Ntuli.
He further stated that the prevalence of violence and killings do not happen in isolation, adding that some of the causes were a culture of interference, attempts to unduly influence, and intimidation.
Ntuli, who is also King Cetshwayo District Municipality mayor and IFP provincial chairperson, said that in reported instances the management of some municipalities had been taken hostage and forced to sign agreements before they were released.
He said nationally, in the past two years, 167 councillors had been replaced because of death, of whom 40% were ward councillors and 60% were proportional representation (PR) councillors.
He warned that the province was now at a tipping point and could very well descend into political violence of an intra- and inter-party nature.
He added that the familiar fault line between the ANC and the IFP was now the playground of parties that failed to win significant seats.
“The period of tension only needs a match for it to turn into open hostilities and the once-called ‘no-go areas’.
“What is encouraging is that most by-elections are peaceful. The use of government powers to undermine local leadership remains a real threat.
“The following observations can be made:
1) By-elections have become high-stakes events that periodically bring a change of leadership.
2) The deaths of, or removal of, councillors is treated with suspicion and tests the internal policy regimes of political parties and councils.
3) Cogta MEC has been found to have not followed the legal process at times.
4) Power is no longer about the number of seats you have but about the number of partnerships or alliances you can formulate.
5) Provincial and national elections will further strain the coalition.
He added that in some instances damage to property and violence were used to intimidate the management and councillors to concede to the demands.
Interference, attempts to unduly influence and intimidation in the context of this discussion is not only located in bargaining between employees and the employer but also the contestation found between members of different parties in the council, members of the council in the same party, senior managers and members of the council.
Salga also revealed that figures collected from municipalities in the province since November 2021 showed that it was now undeniable that assassinations were the leading cause of death.
The entity said out of 40 councillors who died, 18 were assassinated, 17 died of natural causes, three died in car accidents, while two committed suicide.
In 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a ministerial committee to look into political killings, which resulted in the formation of the police’s political killings unit. The committee, which includes senior prosecutors and Correctional Services officials, is headed by Police Minister Bheki Cele.
Although they have made important arrests, the outcry was that in most cases it had failed to find the masterminds behind the political killings, the people who were suspected to have hired the trigger pullers. In most cases, courts found that the accused did not know the person they allegedly killed, which proved that they were allegedly hired assassins.
Police Ministry spokesperson Lirandzu Themba had not yet responded to the questions sent to her at the time of publishing.
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