By Nco Dube | 29 October 2026

On 15 October, Lungani Makhathini and Nokuthula Mavundla went door to door campaigning for the ANC in Umgababa, south of Durban. They were asking residents for votes. Gunmen opened fire, killing both and wounding three others. Their families now face the terrible business of burying them. Fellow campaigners must decide whether knocking on the next door is worth risking their lives.

Two months earlier, Sibusiso “Khekhe” Khwela, the ANC councillor for Ward 17 in Klaarwater, was attending to residents at his office. A man approached as though he needed help. When Khwela stepped outside, the man shot him repeatedly. He was killed while doing one of the simplest things expected of a councillor: being available to the people he represented. Khwela was reportedly not even standing for re-election.

We may yet learn what drove these killers. What is already clear is the fear such attacks leave behind. In Umgababa, ANC campaigners reportedly became afraid to return to the area. In Klaarwater, a ward office became the scene of a killing. Somewhere along the way, participating in politics and serving one’s community have become activities that can carry a fatal price.

We worry about threats to democracy in Parliament, the courts and election results. Yet democracy can be wounded on a township street or outside a councillor’s office. A gunman arrives, somebody dies, and others learn to keep their heads down.

A history we should know better than to repeat

Research published this month by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime recorded 45 suspected political attacks between January and September 2026, leaving at least 43 people dead. KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 16 attacks and Gauteng for 10. The recorded death toll had already exceeded the full-year figures in the organisation’s monitoring for the 2021 and 2024 elections. These are suspected political attacks, but the picture is grim enough without dressing it up.

KwaZulu-Natal carries a painful memory of political violence. During apartheid’s final years and the transition to democracy, communities were torn apart, neighbours became enemies and thousands were killed. Families learnt which roads to avoid and which political colours could invite danger. The circumstances today are different. The fear is horribly familiar.

We did not fight for the right to vote so that people would once again have to calculate the personal danger of attending a political meeting.

The deadly value of a council seat

To understand the violence, we also have to look at what political office has come to represent. A councillorship provides a salary and status. It can also bring access to people who influence municipal budgets, appointments, contracts and development projects. In communities with few jobs and little money, those connections carry enormous weight.

A local politician can become a perceived gatekeeper to opportunities that should be allocated through fair public processes. Jobs, housing lists and contracts acquire political intermediaries. Loyalty becomes valuable. The struggle to represent a community begins to resemble a struggle to control the resources flowing into it.

This is no fanciful explanation. In 2023, government reported that investigations by the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) had identified disputes over councillor positions and internal party conflicts among factors in cases linked to the 2016 and 2021 elections. Business forums, development projects and tenders also featured in certain investigations.

There is a bitter irony here. The councillorship exists to serve residents. Yet in places where public office has become a route to economic advantage, losing a nomination may mean losing much more than a political contest. Rivalries can turn vicious, sometimes within the same party. The person seen as standing between someone and a coveted position may be a comrade rather than an opposition politician.

South Africa’s changing electoral map adds new contenders to councils once dominated by one party. The ANC is weaker, MKP has emerged as a major force, and smaller parties can hold deciding votes. That competition is legitimate. What deserves scrutiny is the patronage surrounding positions that these parties contest. Where a seat becomes a route to controlling resources, political ambitions can attract criminal interests.

A councillorship should never become a prize worth killing for.

Fear votes before we do

Violence changes political life even when it does not change the result on paper. After a killing, a volunteer stops putting up posters. A potential candidate decides that the risk is too high. A family urges its politically active member to stay home. No formal ban is needed. People have seen enough.

Sometimes fear does the work.

We rightly expect the Electoral Commission to run orderly elections, secure ballots and count every vote correctly.

But a credible count cannot tell us who stayed away from campaigning, who withdrew from a nomination or who avoided a meeting because of threats. Voters may arrive at a peaceful polling station after political choices have already been narrowed by intimidation.

That is why the response cannot end with another statement condemning violence. Parties must confront threats inside their own structures, particularly during candidate selection. They cannot condemn intimidation when their members are victims and look away when their own supporters are accused of it.

Police investigations must reach beyond the gunman to whoever organised and paid for a killing, where evidence points to a commissioned attack. The Political Killings Task Team should be judged by investigations that lead to convictions and by whether threatened people can continue their work in safety.

South Africans have heard enough promises that no stone will be left unturned. They want the people responsible brought before a court.

There is also a responsibility on those who control public institutions. Transparent recruitment, properly regulated procurement and independent municipal administration can reduce the opportunities that make political positions so attractive to patronage networks. Policing is indispensable, but the economic incentives surrounding political office cannot simply be ignored.

What will the election really measure?

As 4 November approaches, we are absorbed by opinion polls, the ANC’s decline, MKP’s rise and the coalitions that may follow. Those are important questions. Yet behind all the electoral arithmetic lies a simpler one: can people take part in politics without fearing for their lives?

The death of a campaigner does not end when the television cameras leave. A family has an empty chair at the table. A community loses a voice. Fellow activists carry the memory into the next rally, the next door-to-door visit, the next candidate meeting.

South Africa’s freedom was won at a terrible cost. KwaZulu-Natal knows that cost intimately. We should be deeply troubled by any return to a politics in which guns threaten the right to organise and serve.

A free election demands more than an orderly queue and an accurate count. It demands that candidates can stand, volunteers can campaign and residents can choose without intimidation. The state must protect that freedom, and political parties must stop treating violence within their ranks as somebody else’s problem.

A ballot paper cannot restore a choice that a bullet has already taken away.