Sindiso "Super" Magaqa, who has died at the age of 35 supposedly from bullet wounds sustained in an ambush in July, was a ward councillor and executive committee member of the Umzimkhulu municipality in southern KwaZulu-Natal.
He was the fifth councillor to be fatally shot in Umzimkhulu since April, and one of many apparent assassination victims in the province.
Magaqa, who had blown the whistle on corruption in the municipality and ignored warnings not to contest a powerful regional position, is the most high-profile victim to date.
Magaqa seemed headed for big things when he became secretary-general of the ANC Youth League under the leadership of Julius Malema in June 2011.
Instead, within less than a year of being elected, he was suspended for 18 months following a string of belligerent statements made by the youth league executive against senior party leaders.
Malema was expelled from the ANC and started the EFF.
Although they were close, and Magaqa supported the EFF programme of nationalisation and expropriation without compensation, he chose to remain in the ANC after his suspension was lifted.
It was a tough decision which reflected his sense of loyalty to the party rather than the promise of material benefits any time soon.
He had pretty much burnt his bridges with the ANC, and certainly the new youth league that replaced the Malema team wanted very little to do with him.
And so he returned to the branches where his rise to the top of the youth league had begun. He was a hard worker, an organiser par excellence and a quietly spoken and thoughtful but very effective public speaker.
He picked up where he had left off when national office beckoned.
He was very popular in the region and had a huge support base, which he had built up over many years.
But for several years he was in the political wilderness and had no obvious source of income until bagging a job as youth affairs manager of Umzimkhulu municipality.
Magaqa was born in Umzimkhulu's Ibisi township on May 7 1983. He was a radical student activist at Ibisi High School and rose to be leader of the school branch of the Congress of South African Students.
He joined the youth league in 1997 and was elected branch chairman a year later.
He held leadership positions at regional and provincial level before being elected to the youth league executive.
Raised concerns
Magaqa's death may have been related to ANC factional politics in KwaZulu-Natal, or to local corruption.
He had raised repeated concerns with the executive committee of Umzimkhulu municipality about the upgrade of Umzimkhulu Memorial Hall, whose budget ballooned from R4-million to R37-million.
When his concerns were ignored he handed documentary evidence to a friend in the provincial executive, which was then handed to South African Revenue Service commissioner Tom Moyane, the National Treasury and the Hawks.
Magaqa had been lobbied by his many supporters and agreed to fight for the position of secretary of the influential Harry Gwala region in the southwest of KwaZulu-Natal.
He was asked by a rival faction in the region to settle for the position of deputy secretary, but refused.
The deputy secretary position had been left vacant after Umzimkhulu speaker Khaya Thobela was gunned down in April.
The regional elective conference of the ANC is due to be held later this month.
After attending the Stephen Dlamini memorial lecture delivered by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in Ixopo in May, where she warned that factionalism would tear apart the ANC, Magaqa said he feared for his life as tension in the region rose.
In one of his last WhatsApp messages he wrote: "Oh, Lord, my trust is in you."
He is survived by his wife, Gugu, and four children.
1983-2017
