Picture: Screenshot
A gravel road had to be patched up for Police Minister Bheki Cele and his entourage as they visited Mkhondo in Mpumalanga following the murder of an ANC ward councillor.
Sbonelo Mthembu, who was a councillor at Mkhondo Local Municipality, was gunned down alongside two other people in Piet Retief on Friday.
The 36-year-old, his mechanic and another man were ambushed by three suspects who started firing multiple shots at the councillor.
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A case with three counts of murder has since been opened, and the suspects are still at large.
On Monday, Cele, national police commissioner Fannie Masemola and Mpumalanga premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane went to Piet Retief to visit the bereaved families.
En-route to one of the families, however, a construction truck was deployed to fix gravel road before Cele and his entourage proceeded with their journey.
Speaking to the media on Monday, Cele said the root cause of political killings was the non-arrest of the perpetrators.
“Some of them are already known… they have names. But [our role] as the police is not to come here and repeat the names [instead we have to] put the people and the faces to those names,” he said.
The minister indicated that gaps have been identified within the local police in the area.
“Maybe the approach that we have used in other places where there are political killings like KZN [KwaZulu-Natal] is the same approach that we are going be using.”
READ MORE: At least 145 cases of political killings on record in KwaZulu-Natal
He further said that a multi-disciplinary team would investigate political killings in Mkhondo in Mpumalanga.
“We hope it won’t take too long to resolve and crack the cases,” he added.
On timeframes for arrests of the culprits, Cele said: “There is one thing we should not fall for [and that is doing] things that we are going to regret. The investigating team would have to do thorough work. By the time those people are arrested, it should not be arresting for withdrawal and acquittal.
“[We understand that] the tensions are high and [people] want things to happen quick, but at the end of the day results must tell that the work has been done thoroughly.”
Nhleko’s killing followed the murder of ANC Gert Sibande regional deputy chairperson Muzi Manyathi who was gunned down at a fuel station in Piet Retief in November last year.
Several councillors and ward candidates have been killed across the country in the past two years mainly in KZN.
This has led to calls for the South African Police Service (Saps) to strengthen its intelligence-gathering apparatus in order to detect the planned killings before they happen.
The Moerane Commission, which was established in 2016 to investigate political killings in KZN, previously heard evidence that some of the murders were related to corruption in the local government sector.
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