Sechaba ka’Nkosi
A group of highly trained operatives linked to dirty tricks operations in KwaZulu-Natal in the early 1990s has been directly implicated in the recent upsurge of violence in the Midlands town of Richmond.
A report by peace monitors suggests that senior politicians, right-wing farmers, police and military chiefs have regrouped and are exploiting tensions between the African National Congress and the United Democratic Movement in the area as part of an overall strategy to destabilise the province before next year’s elections.
On Wednesday two prominent ANC leaders — Bheki Mthembu and Skhondla Mthethwa – were gunned down minutes after attending a local council meeting in Gingindlovu near Eshowe on the north coast. The ANC described the attack as part of a sustained campaign to assassinate most of its prominent leaders before the elections.
Recent reports by peace monitors detail “third-force sponsored violence” that can be traced back directly to rogue elements within the security forces. They claim there is collusion between senior Inkatha Freedom Party leaders, the UDM and other anti-ANC forces.
The report says the strategy involves instigating taxi violence and faction fights in rural KwaZulu-Natal, and creating hitches for projects such as the delivery of electricity and water and building roads to thwart an ANC take-over of the province next year.
If the strategy succeeds in Richmond, the next step would be to import it to the greater Pietermaritzburg area, where the UDM has already reported harassment and intimidation by ANC members.
Senior police officers are named as co-conspirators, and are the targets of Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi’s all-out offensive against sinister elements in the police in KwaZulu-Natal.
The report gives examples that point to a pattern of violence emerging in the run-up to the elections.
The security forces have conducted unauthorised raids in ANC strongholds such as the Ngqobokazi area near Hluhluwe in the past two weeks. Two weeks ago, a Hluhluwe chief’s wife was assaulted, a knife held to her throat and breasts by plainclothed and camouflaged men demanding her husband’s whereabouts. A case has been opened at Ubombo police station.
Says the report: “There are apparently insufficient security force members to prevent large-scale loss of life in areas such as Richmond and the Glebelands hostel [in Durban], and many other flashpoints. However, army and police management see fit to send dozens of security force members into a peaceful area to terrorise residents.
“There appears to be a high degree of support for the ANC in this area and residents allege that the aim of the operation was to disarm them and facilitate an attack – an all-too- familiar pattern in the province.”
The report notes that the latest violence has targeted UDM general secretary and local strongman Sifiso Nkabinde’s political opponents. It says since Nkabinde’s expulsion from the ANC last year and his subsequent arrest and acquittal on murder charges, residents in possession of information about him and members of the notorious self- defence units in the area have been killed or forced out of Richmond.
The report counts the timing, precision and the professional manner in which the latest killings have been executed as key indications that people other than warring self-defence unit members in the two settlements could be involved in the squabble.
A paramilitary training camp in Maphumulo allegedly manned jointly by known warlords and senior members of the police and defence force is identified as one of the primary sources of hit men responsible for recent ambushes in Richmond, taxi violence and faction fighting in the most rural parts of the province.
Most of the people identified by locals as perpetrators are identified as hit men from as far afield as Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast, an allegation interpreted by the monitors as a calculated strategy to ensure that none of the killings are traced back to known warlords in the Richmond area.
The report also complains that confidential information given to local police on the violence filters easily back to the warlords, and as a result crucial witnesses to some of the killings have been killed or left the area
The pattern in the report is confirmed by interviews with the survivors of an attack during which three youths were killed execution-style in a mission compound in the heartland of the ANC stronghold of Ndaleni last Friday.
Witness Agnes Madondo said that, shortly before the killings, a police Casspir drove past, followed by a vehicle which parked in front of the mission. A few seconds later another Casspir went by. The vehicle parked in front of the mission drove inside, made a U-turn and parked at the gate. Its occupants knocked at the doors of some of the rooms in the compound, before a sudden eruption of gunfire that lasted less than a minute.
“We fail to understand why the second Casspir failed to search a suspicious- looking vehicle parked in front of a disused mission compound; why within seconds of their ignorance and the subsequent shootings no attempts were made to establish the cause,” says Madondo. “How was this vehicle allowed to venture into a known ANC stronghold and speed out of the settlement easily when we have a high-profile army and police contingent at the entrance?
“Whenever we say there are sinister forces involved in the violence people think we are exaggerating. But how do you explain this particular incident?”
The reports by peace monitors suggests the setting up of a new credible, hand-picked investigating team that would report directly to Mufamadi as a solution to escalating violence.
The report says National Police Commissioner George Fivaz and current members of the national investigations task unit – including Bushie Engelbrecht – must be left out of new initiatives.
“This team would have to be black-led because there are no senior white members who can be trusted, with the exception of Frank Dutton [formerly in the investigations task unit], now based with the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague,” the report says.