Bloody weekend in South Africa as 36 people shot, 19 killed

By Ngala Hansel

It has been a bloody weekend in South Africa as a total of 36 people were shot over the weekend in the country. Fifteen people were shot dead in a tavern in Soweto, a township outside of Johannesburg on Sunday. At press time, 9 people injured in the attacks had been hospitalized.

On Saturday, June 9, another 4 people were shot dead at another bar in Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital of KwaZulu Natal province. Another 8 people were in critical condition at press time. In total, 36 people were shot within a span of 24 hours.

South African news site News24, quotes Gauteng province’s Police Commissioner Elias Mawela on the Soweto shooting as saying:

“We believe that there must have been more than one shooter, at this stage we don’t know what the motive for the shooting was, but I can say that the scene looks like the shooters came here with an intention to kill but randomly so”.
Mawela added that the ages of those killed in the shooting ranged from 19 to 35 and that most of them were males.
South Africa is home to a large African diaspora, most of whom are resident in Johannesburg and include a good number of Cameroonians concentrated in Hillbrow, Braamfontein, Yeoville, and Berea. It is unclear whether any foreign national or Cameroonian in particular was involved in the shootings. But police comments seem to suggest that this was not an attack directed at foreigners particularly.
Just last month, members of the Dudula Movement set foreign-owned shops on fire in Yeoville.
Some sources have ranked South Africa as one of the deadliest countries in the world.