KWAZULU-NATAL – Gunmen shot and killed two members of South Africa’s African National Congress on Thursday as they campaigned for local government elections next month.

Police confirmed the attack happened in the politically volatile eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. The incident comes just days after gunmen killed four ANC youth activists in a shooting near Johannesburg.

The November 4 local government elections are seen as a test of support for the ANC, the largest party in the national coalition government. Tensions have been rising ahead of the vote.

Gunmen in a vehicle opened fire on ANC members during a door-to-door campaign in KwaZulu-Natal’s Umgababa area, about 35 kilometres south of the main port city of Durban.

“Two people, a man and a woman, were declared dead at the scene and one woman reportedly injured her leg when she was fleeing from the assassins,” police said in a statement.

“The motive of the killing is unknown but political intolerance cannot be ruled out,” they added.

The victims were from the ANC, the party that led the struggle against apartheid and took power after the first all-race election in 1994.

An ANC representative told the EWN news site: “When they came out of one of the households, they were ambushed, shot at.”

Umgababa was once an ANC stronghold but has seen support shift towards the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) of former president Jacob Zuma, a KwaZulu-Natal stalwart.

The area saw conflict between ANC-aligned organisations and the Inkatha Freedom Party in the 1980s that claimed scores of lives.

A special police unit that investigates political killings has taken over the case involving Tuesday’s attack that killed four ANC youth league members near Johannesburg.

At least 43 people died in suspected politically linked attacks to the end of September, according to the independent Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC).

This is higher than the full-year totals in 2021, when the previous local government elections were held, and 2024, the year of the previous national vote, the civil society group said this month.

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