Cape Talk

Local government elections. Is there a link between that part of our political process and the phenomenon you're digging deeper into? Yes, indeed. I think the Global Initiative has documented close to 200 political assassination cases since 2000. And many of those, what we do see, is a particular spike around municipal and local government election years. In fact, around, I think, more than

Half of them, around 56% of assassinations since that time have taken place in those years. So it's a period when there's contestation over resources in municipalities and increasingly dwindling resources. It's when tensions over access to tenders' resources come to a head. But it's also, in some instances, a way of eradicating opposition to people taking up positions. Is there a pattern?