Sindiso Magaqa

Sindiso Magaqa (died 4 September 2017) was a South African politician from KwaZulu-Natal. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), he was assassinated while serving as a local councillor in Umzimkhulu Local Municipality. He was formerly the secretary general of the ANC Youth League from June 2011 to April 2012, when he was found guilty of misconduct and suspended from the party for a year.

Magaqa was born in the township of Ibisi in Umzimkhulu, which was a part of the Eastern Cape until it joined KwaZulu-Natal in 2006. He joined the Congress of South African Students while still in primary school, and he went on to become an active member of the African National Congress, joining the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in 1997. In tandem with his political career, he studied law at the University of South Africa and for a time was employed as a project manager in the Umzimkhulu Local Municipality.

He would stand for nomination at every elective conference, from branch level... the only thing that prevented him from standing for elections at Women's League conferences was because he is a man.

Magaqa rose to political prominence in the ANCYL, first in the league's regional executive committee in Alfred Nzo (in the Eastern Cape) and then as the regional chairperson, for four terms, of the league's Harry Gwala branch (in KwaZulu-Natal). In May 2010, he was elected as the deputy provincial chairperson of the ANCYL's KwaZulu-Natal branch. He and the newly elected provincial chairperson, Mthandeni Dlungwana, were both elected as part of a slate of candidates aligned to the provincial secretary, Bheki Mtolo.

After only a year in the provincial branch, Magaqa emerged as the frontrunner to succeed Vuyiswa Tulelo as national secretary general of the ANCYL. As the leadership elections approached, he had the support of eight of the league's nine provincial branches; his opponent, Ayanda Matiti, was the chairperson of the Eastern Cape branch and attracted its support. The ANCYL's 24th national conference was held in June 2011 at Gallagher Estate in Midrand and Magaqa was elected as secretary general, with Kenetswe Mosenogi as his deputy.

Magaqa entered the ANCYL secretariat at the outset of the second term of league president Julius Malema, who had already clashed several times with the leadership of the mainstream ANC. The Mail & Guardian regarded Magaqa as a close ally of Malema, and he adopted a similarly provocative stance. In particular, in August 2011, he published an ANCYL statement that was highly critical of Malusi Gigaba, the incumbent Minister of Public Enterprises. The statement accused Gigaba of "pleasing imperialists" by publicly criticising the ANCYL's policy on the nationalisation of mines.

Later in August 2011, after Malema issued a particularly provocative statement of his own, the ANC's National Executive Committee took disciplinary action against the entire top leadership of the ANCYL. Magaqa appeared with the others at a disciplinary tribunal at Luthuli House on 30 August. On 10 November, the ANC's National Disciplinary Committee, chaired by Derek Hanekom, found Magaqa found guilty of misconduct for his public attacks on Minister Gigaba. As sanction, his ANC membership was suspended and he was ordered to apologise publicly to Gigaba.

Through a complicated internal appeals process, this sentence was reconsidered once by the National Disciplinary Committee (which increased it to a three-year suspension), and twice by Cyril Ramaphosa's National Disciplinary Committee of Appeals. At the conclusion of the process in April 2012, Ramaphosa's committee ultimately handed Magaqa a one-year suspension from the ANC.