The weekend murder of former senior government official Warwick Dorning seriously questions the ruling party’s selective security arrangements for its cadres, the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (Hospersa) said on Monday.
African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema’s reported security was costing the taxpayer R300 000 a month, necessary, or so the league claimed, as he had recently received death threats.
”The murder of Dorning on Saturday evening by two armed thugs occurred when he rushed to his screaming wife’s aid only to be shot ‘stone dead, in cold blood, without warning’, according to close friend and fellow civil servant Peter Miller, as reported in the Witness,” Hospersa said in a statement.
Miller, a former provincial finance minister, reportedly said Dorning ”served the new South Africa in a very high capacity for about 15 years. He was a highly educated man and an accomplished historian.”
Two armed men attacked the couple on their farm Adamshurst, near Pietermaritzburg, at about 8pm on Saturday.
”For how much longer, one wonders, are farmers expected to put up with the carnage experienced in rural communities, especially against one who ‘made an immense contribution to ensuring food security for our people and building our economy’, provincial agriculture minister Lydia Johnson also reported in the Witness article on Dorning’s death.
”When one considers ‘Loud Mouth’ Malema’s recent utterances there is little wonder that he has a need for protection,” Hospersa said.
It was sad that senior civil servants such as Dorning, who had given much of themselves to rebuilding democracy, were left without protection while politicians such as Malema were afforded taxpayers’ money for security needs necessitated by their own ”uncomradely and brutish” behaviour.
Hospersa expressed its condolences to Dorning’s immediate and extended family. — Sapa