The EFF has reacted with fury to the decision by the Freedom Front Plus to field a convicted apartheid-era murderer as its mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.
The party on Monday revealed that the FF Plus has nominated Bill Harington – a former police officer who served 13 years in prison for the murder of ANC activist Mbongeni Jama in 1991 – as its mayoral candidate ahead of the 2026 Local Government Elections.
In a scathing statement, the EFF said it notes “with concern” the decision to front Harington, despite his conviction.
Harington was 21 years old and a section head of a team of Inkatha special constables when he was involved in the killing of Jama in the final years of apartheid. He was later convicted of murder and jailed after his application for amnesty before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was refused.
He served 13 years.
“The EFF recognises that South Africa’s constitutional order is founded on the possibility of rehabilitation, but this cannot become an excuse to erase the political and historical circumstances in which crimes were committed,” the party said.
“Jama’s killing took place within the final years of apartheid, in which apartheid state security structures and formations enforced violent repression of activists and leaders of the liberation movement.”
The red berets argued that the nomination forces victims of apartheid to relive their trauma.
“What makes this particularly disturbing is the sheer lack of care shown to the victims of apartheid and their families,” the EFF said.
“To place the person convicted in connection with that killing before the public as a political candidate is to force Jama’s family, and countless other victims, to encounter the violence of that period once again in the political present.”
The party linked the matter to the country’s unresolved apartheid accountability, pointing to the ongoing Khampepe Commission of Inquiry, which is probing why TRC cases were never prosecuted.
“That history matters because South Africa has never fully resolved the question of accountability for apartheid-era crimes. The continuing work of the Khampepe Commission has again exposed the extent to which prosecutions arising from the TRC process were delayed or never pursued,” the EFF said.
“Evidence before the commission has raised questions about political interference and the failure to hold perpetrators of serious apartheid-era crimes accountable.”
The EFF said South Africa cannot continue down a path where victims are expected to live with reminders of their trauma while perpetrators are normalised in public life.
“We have seen the same pattern in the continued public visibility afforded to figures such as Wouter Basson, while there are still South Africans such as Helen Zille who deny or minimise the brutality of apartheid itself,” the statement read.
“The crimes of apartheid are progressively being stripped of their political meaning and reduced to unfortunate incidents committed by individuals who have since ‘moved on’. Yet the consequences of that system remain visible in the distribution of land, wealth, housing, education, employment, and economic opportunity.”
The EFF described Harington’s candidature as an act of violence.
“The forwarding of this apartheid murderer on the ballot of a democratic South Africa by FF Plus is clearly an act of violence towards the Black people of this country. It is an act to highlight the impunity of white organisations that refuse to accept a democracy that is inclusive and are merely waiting to reverse the gains we have made. It is appalling, divisive, and reckless,” the party said.
The FF Plus had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
The party is expected to argue that Harington has served his sentence, has a constitutional right to stand for office, and that his rehabilitation is in line with South Africa’s constitutional democracy.