Police say the establishment of a task team in KwaZulu-Natal will help to decrease politically motivated killings in the province.
This comes after a hitman was convicted of killing six people including an ANC ward councillor in 2016 by the Esikhaleni Regional Court, in northern KZN.
Fisokuhle Ntuli is also linked to ten other cases and is one of the accused in the Senzo Meyiwa murder case.
Police national spokesperson Vish Naidoo says Ntuli had been on a killing spree in northern KwaZulu-Natal for a long time.
“The number of people that have been killed in the province I think, there was never a week that went past where there wasn’t at least two or three killings in a week in KwaZulu-Natal. But since the establishment of this team, we secured the arrest of over 280 suspects in connections with those killings around 2018. The work done by the KwaZulu-Natal Political Task Team has also helped significantly reduce the number of attacks and killings as far as political violence is concerned,” says Naidoo.
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Meanwhile, the prosecuting team led by Advocate Cyril Selepe is calling for a heavy sentence.
Selepe says they had credible witnesses who risked their lives to offer critical testimony.
“If you have been following the case, some of the people who were killed in this matter were potential witnesses in this matter. The Zulu brothers, all of them, really, were willing to come forward to the police and give the information about the killing of Mr Nyembe who was a ward councillor. The fourth deceased, I think Mr Zungu, he too was a potential witness in the case.”
Selepe adds: “The police were looking for him based on the information that they had received. The accused realised that these people were about to make statements and he decided to kill them, that is why I am saying even the witnesses who came forward here were risking their lives.”
Task team investigating political killings in KZN:
