Another ANC leader has been murdered in Durban, barely a week after he participated in the hard fought eThekwini regional conference which elected a new leadership for the governing party in the city.
Mfundo Mokoena, a member of the ANC Youth League interim task team appointed to relaunch the structure in the province, was shot dead in the Adams Mission area in south Durban on Monday.
Mokoena was the deputy secretary of the ward 67 branch and a former student at the Coastal FET College, where he had started his political career.
At the ANC elective conference last weekend, at which Zandile Gumede was elected as chairperson in absentia, Mokoena had been highly active in lobbying for eThekwini speaker Thabani Nyawose, whose slate was defeated by the grouping led by Gumede.
The police service has yet to comment on the murder of Mokoena — the latest of a series of killings of ANC activists backing Nyawose, which began ahead of local government elections last November — but the ANC region on Tuesday confirmed that he had been shot.
In January, ANC ward 103 councillor Minenhle Mkhize, one of Nyawose’s lobbyists, was shot dead outside his home at Cliffdale, in the west of the city.
Umlazi branch secretary Thulani Shusha was murdered in February, the same month that zonal secretary Bheki Mvubu was shot dead in Clermont. Both were backers of Nyawose’s campaign for ANC eThekwini chairperson.
The ANC in the KwaZulu-Natal province is set to hold its elective conference — which, like eThekwini, will likely be hotly contested — and the slaying of Mokoena raises the potential of another wave of killings in the coming months ahead of the conference, as well as the ruling party’s national conference in December.
The newly elected eThekwini ANC leadership on Tuesday morning condemned Mokoena’s murder while calling on the media not to jump to conclusions and link his killing to the conference and the power struggle within the governing party.
In a statement, regional secretary Musa Nciki said the party was “saddened and shocked” by the murder of Mokoena, who he described as a “dedicated and promising cadre” who “loved and lived” the ANC.
“The killers have robbed his family, movement and society of a bright mind,” Nciki said.
He called on the police to act swiftly and said any person with information that might lead to arrests “should report this at the nearest police station in order to end speculation.”
Nciki’s comments came in response to a number of social media posts linking Mokoena’s death to his stance at the regional conference — and to comments he had made online before his death about the “Zimbali Mob” taking over the region.
The “Zimbali Mob” comments are understood to have referred to a meeting held on the eve of the conference at Zimbali, a luxury estate on the KwaZulu-Natal lower north coast, by supporters of the Gumede faction.
“We call on the reporters not to make a speculative and divisive reporting that seeks to drive a wedge within the movement and society. Irresponsible reporting will shift the attention from real enemies towards sensationalism and derail the investigation,” Nciki said.
He said “conference excitement” in the region had ended and that the focus was now on uniting eThekwini and dealing with the flooding disaster.
Mokoena had accepted the conference outcome, Nciki said.
“Journalists must quickly switch off from pre-conference mode, we have moved and are now ceased (sic) with being part of the solution for (sic) disaster that has engulfed our city.
Mfundo said it himself that, “I am a Congress man, I have accepted the results”,” Nciki said.
On 11 April, Mokoena posted on one of his social media accounts congratulating Gumede and her slate on their victory.
“Without any doubt, I will support this leadership in its effort to rebuild the organisation,” he wrote.
But Mokoena then posted that he did not “regret” backing Nyawose’s slate and that “I refuse to live my life in the region justifying the posture I took”.
The same day, Mokoena wrote that the “Zimbali Mob” should not “privatise” the regional executive committee, which “belongs to all members and is going to lead us all”.
A week later, he was shot dead.
The police service had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing.
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