Joint memorial service for Inchanga victims cancelled
Plans to hold a joint memorial service for a SACP member who was gunned down and another ANC member who was then stoned to death in Inchanga have been aborted.
|||Durban - Plans to hold a joint memorial service for a South African Communist Party member who was gunned down and another African National Congress member who was then stoned to death in Durban's troubled Inchanga area a day later, have been aborted.
Msizi Nhlapho, the SACP's KwaZulu-Natal deputy secretary said that a decision had been taken not to hold the joint memorial service for Nontsikelelo Blose and Xolani Ngcobo.
“The community is not ready for a joint service,” Nhlapho said.
Earlier this week, the SACP and ANC leadership established a joint committee in a bid to bring about an end to the ongoing violence that has claimed at least four lives, seen numerous people injured and buildings torched since the beginning of the year, particularly in Inchanga's Fredville area. Blose, a SACP member was gunned down outside a tavern in Fredville on Sunday night.
She was a witness in the January killing of fellow SACP member Philip Dlamini.
Ngcobo, a member of the ANC was stoned to death on Monday following the angry rampage that erupted following Blose's death.
Two men have been arrested in connection with the death of Blose, and appeared the Camperdown Magistrate's Court on Wednesday.
The court ordered that their identities and their names should not be made public.
The area has been caught up in the furore emanating from the nomination of branch candidates to stand for the ANC in recent local government elections and has pitted ANC members against members of the SACP.
In January, Dlamini was shot following a SACP meeting, where members were meeting to discuss problems of not being allowed to join the ANC and exclusion from the branch nomination process for Ward 4.
Following Dlamini's shooting, five people were eventually arrested, one of whom is a brother of the former ward councillor Boy Shozi, while another is a close relative.
Shozi, a taxi boss did not stand for renomination, but has since been elected the ANC's caucus leader in the eThekwini Metro Municipal council.
The ANC then nominated Nokukhanya Gumede, to stand in the local government elections held on August 3. She was, however, defeated by Petrus Nxumalo, the preferred candidate of many in the area.
He stood as an independent. She still managed to get a seat on the eThekwini Metro Councillor as she was also on the list of the ANC's proportional representative councillors.
SACP deputy provincial chairperson Nomvuzo Shablala said the issue over the nomination of candidates still had to be addressed. “It is something that is not resolved.
Those are matters we as the alliance need to discuss so there is peace,” she said. Shabalala was the former deputy mayor of eThewkini Metro Municipality. She said that Blose's funeral would be on Sunday.
African News Agency