A senior member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was killed while on his way home on Monday night, the union and police said.
Elias Mulaudzi, the NUM’s branch chairperson at Carletonville’s Driefontein gold mine and the town’s councillor, was murdered while on his way home from work.
Mulaudzi (46) was walking home after work when a man armed with a .38 Rossi revolver suddenly stopped him, shot him in the head, and, after he had fallen, shot him in the chest, East Rand police spokesperson Inspector Solomon Sibiya said.
He said Mulaudzi’s alleged killer was apprehended by Mulaudzi’s ”guys”, who handed him over to the police, Sibiya said.
”It seems as if the man was a hired hitman,” Sibiya said, adding that the 26-year-old man is expected to appear in the Carletonville Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
”We are investigating a case of conspiracy within the whole thing. We want to know who hired him and on what grounds.”
He said the man was from KwaZulu-Natal and is not known in the area.
Earlier on Tuesday, NUM spokesperson general secretary Frans Baleni, said: ”This is a great loss to us all … We pass our condolences to the entire Mulaudzi family, the union mourns with them.”
Baleni said Mulaudzi’s death followed that of two other NUM leaders killed in and around the Driefontein mine.
Selby Mayise, the regional chairperson, was killed ”by workers” in the late 1990s. Stokie Monyemoratwa, Mayise’s deputy, was shot dead by unknown assailants in 2002.
”The killings of these union leaders, appearing to be isolated criminal incidents, seem to have a connection with the past factional violence of Driefontein mine.
”Although in the 1990s it bore an overt and public feature, it now seems to have taken a low intensity and covert character,” said Baleni.
Details of Mulaudzi’s funeral would be communicated later, the union said.
Later in the day, the NUM leadership, led by NUM deputy president Crosby Moni, visited the Driefontein mine.
Upon their return, Baleni appealed for calm.
”It is important that all our members, and workers in general, at the mine remain calm in the face of this tragedy,” he said.
”Serious concerns were raised about the fact that another union leader in the same mine was once more killed by an unknown Zulu-speaking person who was not even employed at the mine.
”The union is concerned that these sentiments could invoke tribal and factional emotions that may be deep-seated in the area. We hope that the Goldfields management will play their part in this regard too,” Baleni said. — Sapa