Chickens feed as comrades kill one another

Thursday. It’s a beautiful Durban afternoon, way more suited to a wave at North Beach than standing outside the Inchanga Police Station waiting to hear the outcome of peace talks going on inside.

The public order MEC, Mxolisi Kaunda, is inside trying to put out the fires that have been burning since Sunday.

Things are bad in Intshanga, particularly Ward 4, where former Durban mayor and SA Communist Party (SACP) provincial chairperson James Nxumalo lives.

SACP regional secretary Nonsikelelo Blose, who was a witness to the murder of fellow SACP member Phillip Dlamini in January, was shot dead in a pub on Sunday night.

Harari, as the area is known, went up in flames.

The next morning, local ANC member Xolani Ngcobo was shot dead in a payback shooting. Houses have been torched and hundreds of residents have fled.

Ward 4 has been tense since January when Dlamini was shot dead at an SACP meeting, where members discussed their being sidelined in the candidate selection process for the August 3 elections, apparently for backing the wrong side in the battle for the provincial and regional ANC leadership.

Somehow the elections went down without any gunplay.

Nxumalo’s nephew, Malombo, stood as an independent candidate against the ANC’s Nokukhanya Gumede.

Malombo won the ward, which the ANC has held since 1995/96.

Jesus, to borrow the term of the commander in chief, President Jacob Zuma, has come back to Ward 4.

We get called inside. We pass some chickens feeding at the edge of the parking lot and enter a site office at the back.

Kaunda is flanked by Nxumalo and Boy Shozi, the local ANC leader and the proportional representation councillor for the area.

Nxumalo looks a century older than when he took up office five years ago.

There are other local leaders seated at the table with them and some lahnees from the SA Police Service.

The cameras roll and Kaunda gets going with an update on the peace talks.

There’s progress, but the planned joined memorial is off. Everybody’s gonna do their own thing while the talks continue.

The funerals will be separate. No party T-shirts. No boozing. Fair enough.

One of the TV cats pops the big question: Why are the comrades killing one another?

There’s an uncomfortable silence. Kaunda breaks it.

There’s a history of tensions, but Sunday’s shooting took place in a pub, so they didn’t have anything to do with Jesus coming back to Intshanga.

I wander off and head for the car. The chickens are still feeding.

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