Three arrested for killing ANC activists in Pietermaritzburg
Three men have been arrested in connection with the murder of two African National Congress activists, police said on Friday.
Police spokesman Captain Musa Ntombela confirmed on Friday that the three had been arrested in Pietermaritzburg’s central business district on Thursday.
Ntombela said intensive investigations had led to the arrests so soon after the shooting on Wednesday night.
“The first suspect was arrested before noon and the other two were arrested later on the same day (Thursday). All the suspects are from Imbali Township,” he said.
On Wednesday evening ANC ward 12 activists Badedile Tshapa, 56, and Phetheni Ngubane, 50, were shot at as they returned from a branch election team meeting at Mehlokazulu High School. Tshapa died on the scene while Ngubane died in hospital later on Thursday.
The killings come barely a week after 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 for the upcoming local government elections 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 last week Thursday, 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.
So far there have not been any arrests in connection with either of those killings.
The three men arrested in connection with the killing of the two activists on Wednesday evening are expected to appear in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday.