Last Sunday morning Mankwanyane, a sleepy village in Empangeni outside KwaZulu-Natal, woke up to the blood-splattered scene of the horror massacre of six members of a family.
Faceless killers had moved through the Majola homestead, killing the father, two daughters, a son and two grandchildren.
Two days later, when the Mail & Guardian arrived at the village, mourning relatives were sitting outside the main house. Brothers Qembu (25) and Nhlonipho (18), who survived the attack, still appeared to be recovering from the shock. Hens and their chicks flitted through the house metres away from where their oldest brother fell.
No one cried. They seemed too stunned to speak.
The Majola family was asleep at about 10.30pm on Saturday when the gunmen knocked on the doors of the five little huts that make up their homestead.
Qembu and Nhlonipho survived because they did not open the door of the hut they were sleeping in. “We first thought it was the police and we were going to open the door when we heard the guns go off,” Qembu said.
The killers moved to the next hut, where the brothers’ father opened the door. He was shot, as was his wife Busisiwe, who survived and is in a critical condition.
In the next two huts, the killers murdered Qembu and Nhloniphos’ sisters and two of their children.
A toddler, the child of one of the sisters, and Qembu’s son survived the massacre, as did two older, married sisters, who live further down the homestead.
In a quiet voice Qembu maintained that the killers were looking for him. He said his family, the Majolas, were a known African National Congress family in Mankwanyane, and he believes this is why they were killed. At least two prominent individuals affiliated to the Inkatha Freedom Party in the area had recently made threats in public to eliminate him and his family.
The Matshana tribal area, which includes Mankwanyane, falls under the jurisdiction of Chief Zenzo Zungu, who is allied to the IFP.
The ANC’s provincial spokesperson, Mtholephi Mthimkhulu, described the weekend massacre as part of a political campaign to harass his party members in the area. Mthimkhulu claimed: “It is a well-known fact that the inkosi in the area is hostile towards the ANC — [he] deplores the fact that an ANC branch exists in the area.”
The IFP’s provincial spokesperson, Blessed Gwala, said his party “will not engage in a war-talk situation. It will perpetuate the violence in the end. We also do not want to add salt to the wounds of the affected families.”
Earlier this year, the M&G quoted the ANC as saying more than 10 people had been killed in Matshana and the nearby Mabuyane and Mpembeni areas between November last year and January this year in incidents of political violence.
Bheki Cele, the ANC’s safety and security spokesperson, said the IFP was using traditional leaders as “party machinery”. All the affected areas are controlled by IFP-aligned traditional leaders.
Significantly, Zungu took over after the previous chief, Sibongile Zungu, a descendant of the ANC leader John Dube, fled to Johannesburg three years ago, following death threats.
Mthimkhulu said the ANC had asked for more police to be deployed in the area and for the investigation to be conducted by a team of investigators from outside Empangeni. He said: “We have a strong belief that there is collusion between the police and certain individuals in the area.”
Gwala said the ANC in the province was trying to undermine the KwaZulu-Natal police structures because they were under the control of an IFP member, Inkosi Nyanga Ngubane.
What has struck a suspicious chord is the fact that on the Thursday before the killing police, accompanied by Zungu, conducted a raid in the Majola homestead in search of unlicensed firearms.
Also raided were the homesteads of Nkwanyana and Mshengu, who are also affiliated to the ANC.
Qembu told the M&G that, according to his mother, Mutungethuke, the killers were dressed in police uniforms. “Which is why my father and my elder brother opened the door, when they came knocking at the door in the night,” he explained.
Provincial police spokesperson Bala Naidoo denied there was a link between the raid and the killing. He said the raid was part of the ongoing Operation Sethunya campaign to recover illegal firearms. Naidoo also said no one had reported that the killers were dressed as policemen.
He said, however, that the possibility that the attack was politically motivated could not be eliminated.
Zakhele Mnqayi, the ANC’s deputy chairperson in the area, said his party members lived in fear. The ward in which the Majolas lived was bitterly contested in the elections in 2000. The ANC won it by a narrow margin.
Mnqayi said he expected more trouble in the run-up to the elections next year.
Qembu said he would not be moving to a place of safety. This was where he and his brother belonged.