A list of faces and names crossed out in red appeared on the cover of the Daily Maverick October 15. Those of the ten elected municipal officials killed this year in South Africa. A sample, only, of the latest victims of the local political scene.
“Across the country, civil servants are being assaulted, their homes burnt down and, in the worst-case scenario, they are being murdered in a frantic race by people seeking power and access to state coffers.” If the phenomenon is not new in South Africa, it is taking on a worrying scale, to the point that the investigative media are warning:
“It is our democracy that we are attacking, these are not empty words.”
An elected position is the guarantee of an income
According to a study by the Local Government Association of South Africa (Salga), 48 “incidents” targeting politicians have been recorded in seven of the nine South African provinces since the last municipal elections at the end of 2021. Threatened, kidnapped, extorted, intimidated by ga