I was six years old when Brett Kebble was shot dead in 2005. I didn’t understand the implications at the time, but I could tell that what happened was inherently wrong. It was evident in the way my parents went silent when we drove through the dark stretch of road where it happened.
Now, hauntingly known as the Brett Kebble Bridge, that ordinary bit of tar in Johannesburg has followed me like a ghost — a quiet, persistent reminder that in South Africa, political and criminal power can be negotiated with bullets.
Despite the years of debate surrounding what actually happened on that bridge (some calling it suicide), I still think about that bridge every time a new name is added to the country’s long, grim roll call of assassinations. It was a labyrinth of greed and betrayal, involving figures like Glenn Agliotti, that exposed how power in South Africa—whether corporate, political, or criminal—often speaks through a gun.
Over the last few weeks, two more names were added: IFP MP Khethamabala Petros Sithole, gunned down at a community meeting in Katlehong on 31 May, and Andre Naude, a notorious figure in Cape Town’s security underworld, shot dead in Goodwood on 12 June. Only seven months after the killing of Mark Lifman.
Sithole was a national lawmaker. Naude was one of 13 accused in the murder of international steroid smuggler Brian Wainstein — five of whom have now been killed.
Both Sitole and Naude come from very different political worlds. The former a veteran of public office, the latter a known associate of Cape Town’s so-called Lifman group. But their deaths are tethered by something chilling: the message they send. Assassination, in South Africa, has become less an anomaly and more a tool. A form of communication. A negotiation of power through silencing.
Killing is now its own language
These killings are not random. They are calculated, woven into a tapestry of violence that the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) quantifies with chilling clarity: a 108% surge in targeted killings over the past decade, with 131 recorded in 2023 alone. Political assassinations, like Sithole’s, made up nearly a quarter of these, spiking during election years, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, where 19 such murders were recorded in 2023.
From councillors to whistleblowers like Babita Deokaran, shot 12 times in 2021 for exposing corruption, the motives are stark: eliminate rivals, secure contracts, silence dissent. Yet, with only 15% of murder cases solved in 2022/23, impunity reigns.
A democracy under siege
Political assassinations in South Africa are not mere crimes; they are a direct assault on the democratic fabric we fought so hard to weave. The murder of Sithole, gunned down at Buyafuthi Hostel, is a stark reminder that even parliamentarians are not safe. His death, with two suspects now facing charges but no clear motive, joins 120 unresolved political murders, according to the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP).
GI-TOC reports that between January and April 2024 alone, 10 politically motivated killings occurred, averaging one every two weeks, leading up to the national elections. KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), dubbed the epicentre of this violence, has seen 488 such assassinations since 2000, with 54 councillors and 103 municipal workers killed in politically linked attacks.
The motives are as varied as they are sinister: removing rivals, intimidating voters, securing lucrative municipal contracts, or silencing whistleblowers like Deokaran, whose 12 bullet wounds testify to the cost of courage.
This is a nation where power is contested not at the ballot box but in a shadow economy of hitmen, fuelled by illicit firearms and gang networks. The 2021 Global Organized Crime Index ranks South Africa among Africa’s highest for criminality, a ranking etched in blood by these targeted killings.
A state faltering in the face of violence
On 31 December 2024, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu disbanded the KZN political killings task team, igniting outrage, despair and most likely fear. MKP spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela branded it “reckless,” citing the team’s arrests in over 40 cases between 2018 and 2022.
Yet, violence monitor Mary de Haas, writing to Mchunu in October 2024, called the unit a wasteful, possibly corrupt entity, accusing it of hoarding dockets to settle political scores.
Further details are damning: the task team, established post the 2016 Moerane Commission, was meant to probe KZN’s political violence but achieved very little, with most cases already handled by other detectives before its formation.
Allegations of police complicity deepen the wound—Sibusiso Ncengwa’s guilty plea in the 2017 murder of ANC youth leader Sindiso Magaqa revealed a weapon bought with Crime Intelligence funds, hinting at a “third force” orchestrating hits.
A deadly crossroads
The bridge where Kebble died used to feel like a warning. Now, it feels like a metaphor. A narrow crossing from the rule of law into rule by force.
What’s more terrifying than a country where politicians and underworld figures are killed with the same frequency? A country where it stops shocking us.
The culture of assassination isn’t just a symptom of corruption — it is corruption, in its most distilled and dangerous form. And until we treat these killings not as isolated tragedies but as part of a systemic rot, we’ll keep crossing that bridge. Again and again.
Emma is a freshly graduated Journalist from Stellenbosch University, who also holds an Honours in history. She joined the explain team, eager to provide thorough and truthful information and connect with her generation.
COLUMN | In South Africa, killing is a language of political power
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I was six years old when Brett Kebble was shot dead in 2005. I didn’t understand the implications at the time, but I could tell that what happened was inherently wrong. It was evident in the way my parents went silent when we drove through the dark stretch of road where it happened.
Now, hauntingly known as the Brett Kebble Bridge, that ordinary bit of tar in Johannesburg has followed me like a ghost — a quiet, persistent reminder that in South Africa, political and criminal power can be negotiated with bullets.
Despite the years of debate surrounding what actually happened on that bridge (some calling it suicide), I still think about that bridge every time a new name is added to the country’s long, grim roll call of assassinations. It was a labyrinth of greed and betrayal, involving figures like Glenn Agliotti, that exposed how power in South Africa—whether corporate, political, or criminal—often speaks through a gun.
Over the last few weeks, two more names were added: IFP MP Khethamabala Petros Sithole, gunned down at a community meeting in Katlehong on 31 May, and Andre Naude, a notorious figure in Cape Town’s security underworld, shot dead in Goodwood on 12 June. Only seven months after the killing of Mark Lifman.
Sithole was a national lawmaker. Naude was one of 13 accused in the murder of international steroid smuggler Brian Wainstein — five of whom have now been killed.
Both Sitole and Naude come from very different political worlds. The former a veteran of public office, the latter a known associate of Cape Town’s so-called Lifman group. But their deaths are tethered by something chilling: the message they send. Assassination, in South Africa, has become less an anomaly and more a tool. A form of communication. A negotiation of power through silencing.
Killing is now its own language
These killings are not random. They are calculated, woven into a tapestry of violence that the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) quantifies with chilling clarity: a 108% surge in targeted killings over the past decade, with 131 recorded in 2023 alone. Political assassinations, like Sithole’s, made up nearly a quarter of these, spiking during election years, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, where 19 such murders were recorded in 2023.
From councillors to whistleblowers like Babita Deokaran, shot 12 times in 2021 for exposing corruption, the motives are stark: eliminate rivals, secure contracts, silence dissent. Yet, with only 15% of murder cases solved in 2022/23, impunity reigns.
A democracy under siege
Political assassinations in South Africa are not mere crimes; they are a direct assault on the democratic fabric we fought so hard to weave. The murder of Sithole, gunned down at Buyafuthi Hostel, is a stark reminder that even parliamentarians are not safe. His death, with two suspects now facing charges but no clear motive, joins 120 unresolved political murders, according to the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP).
GI-TOC reports that between January and April 2024 alone, 10 politically motivated killings occurred, averaging one every two weeks, leading up to the national elections. KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), dubbed the epicentre of this violence, has seen 488 such assassinations since 2000, with 54 councillors and 103 municipal workers killed in politically linked attacks.
The motives are as varied as they are sinister: removing rivals, intimidating voters, securing lucrative municipal contracts, or silencing whistleblowers like Deokaran, whose 12 bullet wounds testify to the cost of courage.
This is a nation where power is contested not at the ballot box but in a shadow economy of hitmen, fuelled by illicit firearms and gang networks. The 2021 Global Organized Crime Index ranks South Africa among Africa’s highest for criminality, a ranking etched in blood by these targeted killings.
A state faltering in the face of violence
On 31 December 2024, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu disbanded the KZN political killings task team, igniting outrage, despair and most likely fear. MKP spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela branded it “reckless,” citing the team’s arrests in over 40 cases between 2018 and 2022.
Yet, violence monitor Mary de Haas, writing to Mchunu in October 2024, called the unit a wasteful, possibly corrupt entity, accusing it of hoarding dockets to settle political scores.
Further details are damning: the task team, established post the 2016 Moerane Commission, was meant to probe KZN’s political violence but achieved very little, with most cases already handled by other detectives before its formation.
Allegations of police complicity deepen the wound—Sibusiso Ncengwa’s guilty plea in the 2017 murder of ANC youth leader Sindiso Magaqa revealed a weapon bought with Crime Intelligence funds, hinting at a “third force” orchestrating hits.
A deadly crossroads
The bridge where Kebble died used to feel like a warning. Now, it feels like a metaphor. A narrow crossing from the rule of law into rule by force.
What’s more terrifying than a country where politicians and underworld figures are killed with the same frequency? A country where it stops shocking us.
The culture of assassination isn’t just a symptom of corruption — it is corruption, in its most distilled and dangerous form. And until we treat these killings not as isolated tragedies but as part of a systemic rot, we’ll keep crossing that bridge. Again and again.
Emma Solomon
Emma is a freshly graduated Journalist from Stellenbosch University, who also holds an Honours in history. She joined the explain team, eager to provide thorough and truthful information and connect with her generation.
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