One African National Congress activist was killed and another critically wounded in Pietermaritzburg as they were leaving a local branch meeting in the city’s Imbali township on Wednesday night.
While official confirmation was not immediately forthcoming from the police, it is understood that the two women were gunned down.
One died at the scene while another is in a critical condition in the intensive care unit of a Pietermaritzburg hospital
The killings come barely a week after the Nathi Hlongwa, ANC branch chairman for Ward 12 in the Msunduzi Local Municipality, was gunned down.
The ward has been subject to protests over the nomination of candidates and last week a number of ANC members marched on the party’s regional offices in Pietermaritzburg to demand that the leadership intervene in the candidate selection process.
A day before Hlongwa was killed, a council official from the same ANC region was killed in an apparent ambush.
Simo Mncwabe, who had resigned as a chief financial officer in Mpofana Municipality (Mooi River), also died in a hail of bullets near Henley Dam outside Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday morning.
So far there have not been any arrests in connection with either of those killings.
ANC provincial spokesman Mdumiseni Ntuli confirmed the shooting. He said that the party would issue a statement shortly.
Jackson Mthembu, the ANC’s chief whip in parliament, sent the following message on the Twitter social media platform: “We are filled with grief, sorrow and pain after the spraying with bullets of #ANCBranchLeaders, last night.”
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