Gunmen shot dead two members of South Africa’s African National Congress party Thursday as they campaigned for local government elections next month, police and reports said.

The attack in the politically volatile eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal comes days after four ANC youth activists were killed in a shooting near Johannesburg.

Tensions are rising ahead of the November 4 local government elections that are seen as a test of support for the ANC, the largest party in the national coalition government.

Gunmen in a vehicle opened on ANC members on a door-to-door campaign in KwaZulu-Natal’s Umgababa area, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) south of the main port city of Durban, police said.

“Two people, a man and a woman, were declared dead at the scene and one woman reportedly injured her leg when she was fleeing from the assassins,” they said in a statement.

“The motive of the killing is unknown but political intolerance cannot be ruled out,” it said.

Local media said the victims were from the ANC, the party that led the struggle against apartheid and took power after the first all-race election in 1994.

An ANC representative told the EWN news site: “When they came out of one of the households, they were ambushed, shot at.”

Umgababa was once an ANC stronghold but has seen a shift in support towards the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) of former president Jacob Zuma, a KwaZulu-Natal stalwart.

The area was engulfed in conflict between ANC-aligned organisations and the Inkatha Freedom Party in the 1980s that claimed scores of lives.

The attack that killed four ANC youth league members near Johannesburg on Tuesday has been handed to a special police unit that investigates political killings.

At least 43 people were killed in suspected politically linked attacks to the end of September, according to the independent Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC).

This is higher than the full-year totals in 2021, when the previous local government elections were held, and 2024, the year of the previous national vote, the civil society group said this month. (Channels TV)

•Fikile Mbalula, the secretary general of the African National Congress, in Cape Town in May.Credit…Esa Alexander/Reuters