”Rest in peace my love. I miss you so much, yoh”. These words are appear on the Facebook profile of Glenda Booi, the widow of former ANC Nelson Mandela Bay councillor Mzwandile Booi, one of many casualties of political murders in the region since 2011.
Booi was gunned down in February in Gqeberha’s Kwazakhele township, in what has been recorded as a political killing.
Glenda has since fled to Cape Town, where she works as a teacher. She agreed to speak after protracted persuasion, saying she does not trust anyone now.
The couple’s grown children are still trying to cope with the murder, she said, callling her husband a “pillar of strength”.
”Life has changed drastically — both financially and emotionally. I am left with loans to pay for the funeral. At the moment everything is on my shoulders, and it’s overwhelming. I never received any support from the ANC [or] from the branch executive committee.
“The last time I saw them was when they came and said they wanted to hoist the ANC flag as the usual practice when a cadre dies. They never returned,” said Glenda.
”I did not see this coming … I think he did not want us to be scared by telling us [about the death threats]. We only found out about these after he was murdered.”
Glenda left Gqebhera because jobs were scarce, “but most importantly, I personally don’t feel safe there after we had a break-in at the house”.
”As for the police investigation, I am still waiting … They have not communicated with me to update me on the case, nothing. I have just stopped contacting them because it seems a waste of time and it re-opens the wound,” she said.
Booi’s killing is one of many political murders in Nelson Mandela Bay since 2011, and the numbers are rising. This year there have been six confirmed politically motivated killings, with no arrests made.
This has fuelled the suspicion that police members may be involved in the killings. The suspicions have been voiced by political analysts and academics.
Honorary research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal school of law Mary de Haas said ANC factional battles were common knowledge, as was the use of violence to eliminate rivals.
De Haas told the Mail & Guardian: ”I do know from one Eastern Cape case that local police have taken political sides, abusing someone not in the camp of a local politician.
”A big part of this problem is the politicisation of policing, especially since 2009. It was there before then, but it got far worse, especially when people who were not even trained police were integrated, for example bodyguards of politicians, are sometimes [shifted] to high ranks for political reasons.”
De Haas said political murders were spreading throughout the country, with Mpumalanga also now a hotspot.
The lack of arrests has increased community doubts as to whether police were committed to investigations. The suspicions were bolstered by the findings of the Moerane Commission, established in 2016 to investigate political violence in KwaZulu-Natal.
In 2018, the commission noted in its final report: “The recruitment of criminal elements, including some police officers, by politicians to achieve political ends, resulting in a complex matrix of criminal and political associations, inevitably contributes to the political murders.”
The situation has prompted premier Oscar Mabuyane to ask police minister Bheki Cele to bring in a special task team to quell the killings.
Eastern Cape police deny involvement in the killings, saying that some of the murders attributed to politics were not even politically motivated.
”We have prioritised these cases and we are working on them. Investigations are going on. It might seem as if we are taking time, but that does not mean we are not prioritising them. Also, communities must remember that no one wants to come forward,” Eastern Cape police spokesperson Brigadier Thembinkosi Kwinana told the M&G.
Kwinana said it was difficult to prove if cases were truly politically motivated. They were investigating five cases involving the murders of ANC councillors, he said.
”Out of these cases, two are already in court and there are arrests made. Three are still under investigation with no arrests yet,” he said, adding that they had not established that these cases were politically motivated.
He said suggestions of police being involved in the murders were “far-fetched”.
Told that the families of victims felt that officers were slack in offering updates on investigations, Kwinana said the SAPS didn’t offer “blow by blow” accounts of progress.
De Haas said that during the July riots last year, some police “refused to take any action because they were [Jacob] Zuma supporters — at one station they even intimidated colleagues who were working.”
The intentional politicisation of policing added to the existing corruption problems in the service, De Haas said. She gave as an example the case of whistleblower and activist Thabiso Zulu, who was ”harassed” by police for exposing an allegedly corrupt councillor. Another case was that of former ANC Youth League leader Sindiso Magaqa, who was shot for exposing corruption in Umzimkhulu.
”There is evidence that Crime Intelligence operatives gunned him down,” said De Haas.
Nelson Mandela University political analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast said it was not far-fetched to compare the Eastern Cape political killings with those in KwaZulu-Natal.
”Although police say the most recent [April] murders of two ANC senior Nelson Mandela Bay members were not related to the just-ended Eastern Cape ANC provincial conference, I personally take that with a pinch of salt,” Breakfast told the M&G.
“The Moerane Commission tells us there is a trend of police involvement. There is growing suspicion here in the Eastern Cape that police are joining forces in the murders”
The murders, he said, had nothing to do with political ideolgies but rather material gain — something the Moerane Commission highlighted.
According to professor Mcebisi Ndletyana of the University of Johannesburg, the killings expose how fierce the battle for patronage has become.
‘The first sight of this was in Nelson Mandela Bay in 2017 during the awarding of a R21-million township drain cleaning tender. There was an element of ANC politicians bringing to the fore their underworld side. The Eastern Cape is going the same route as KwaZulu-Natal,” said Ndletyana.
Last month, two ANC politicians — ward councillor Andile Andries and branch secretary Lubabalo Keso — were shot outside Andries’s home in Kariega. In February, councillor Mazwi Mini escaped with a gunshot wound following an attempt on his life in Kwazakhele. In January, an Amathole District Municipality councillor narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.
A former senior ANC councillor in Nelson Mandela Bay, who spoke to the M&G on condition of anonymity, said he was “shocked”.
”This is very foreign …. The ANC has now been infiltrated by people with new tendencies, and this is destroying the organisation. Party members killing each other for positions — it was never heard of before. I think greed, power and resource accumulation are the reasons,” he said.
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