SHIRLEY DE VILLIERS: Political killings and the rise of the mafia state
Law enforcement officials shown to be incapable of containing lawlessness or stemming flood of illegal arms
In September 2022, Sibusiso Gqeba, an ANC ward councillor for Vredenburg in the Western Cape, was shot eight times in the back when a gunman opened fire as he was leaving a meeting. He survived. It wasn’t the first time Gqeba had been in the line of fire; previously, a visitor to his home had been murdered in an apparent case of mistaken identity. Then, last year, his luck ran out. As he was returning to his home at 11.30 one night in September, a gunman approached and shot him in the head and the chest, killing him.
That same month, Mzwandile Shandu — an ANC councillor in the KwaZulu-Natal municipality of uMkhambathini — was gunned down in Umlazi, a month after surviving an attempted assassination...
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