22 July 2016

Durban – A KwaZulu-Natal ANC ward councillor fears for her life after she found a dead chicken tied up with red wool and her photograph with a needle through it.

"I am a dead woman walking," Nomonde Mthethwa, an outgoing councillor in Ward 9, Malende, in KwaDukuza, said on Friday.

Mthethwa, 47, said she did washing on Wednesday morning and went outside to hang it up to dry.

"On my way to the line, I found an unusual object. When I got closer I noticed that it was a dead chicken tied with red wool. There was a tied-up white paper and, when I opened it, it was my picture with a needle stuck through my heart."

Mthethwa said there was a small Smirnoff Vodka 1818 bottle filled with muti, a red candle, and a R10 note.

"I think someone is trying to kill me. In isiZulu, this means that I am a dead woman and my family is in danger."

Mthethwa said she did not understand why someone would want to kill her, because she was not coming back as a councillor after the August 3 local government elections.

She recalled that during the candidate nomination period, two ANC members had told her that if she was re-elected, they would burn her house down. She did not want to mention their names.

The only reason she could think of why she was being targeted was that she had spoken up against housing corruption in the area.

"I called the police to report the incident, but they told me that there was no unit that investigated muti. I am so scared," Mthethwa said.

This article first appeared on News24, see here.