Three armed men arrived at a house party in the Ziko area of KwaMakhutha township, south of Durban, shortly before 11 p.m. local time late Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, and opened fire on guests, killing 12 people and wounding two others. South African police have launched a manhunt for the three gunmen.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said “This cannot go on like this,” speaking to local media channels about two weekend shootings that he noted came only days after the house-party shooting near Durban.
“This is the level of criminality that we must bring down, and our security forces are now going to continue pulling out all stops,” Ramaphosa said in the same remarks.
Inside the KwaMakhutha House
There were 14 people inside the small house — 13 men and one woman believed to be pregnant. Police said 10 died at the scene and four were taken to hospital. One of them died shortly afterward, and police confirmed on Friday, Sept. 25, that a second had died, raising the toll to 12.
Local broadcaster eNCA reported that the attackers carried pistols and rifles, forced everyone into a single room before opening fire, then set alight a car belonging to one of the victims before fleeing. Police said they were examining whether that car fire was connected to the shooting.
Bodies lay outside the house under sheets before stretcher crews carried them to pathology vans. Officers strung tape around the neighborhood, and forensic teams combed the property.
What Police Are Investigating
Colonel Robert Netshiunda, the provincial police spokesperson, said preliminary investigations found some victims had previously come to the attention of Crime Intelligence over suspected illegal activities. Police declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation, and added that a feud between rival groupings could not be ruled out.
Acting National Police Commissioner Lt. Gen. Puleng Dimpane directed the KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner to activate a 72-hour tracking operation to run down the three suspects, and said investigators were following a “promising lead.” Police and provincial officials first laid out details on Wednesday, Sept. 23. As of Sept. 28, the three gunmen remained at large and no arrests had been reported.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli visited the scene and urged residents to come forward with anything that might help. Ntuli said the community had been left “in profound shock and grief.” He described a largely poor community with known drug-dealing and illegal-firearm problems, where homes stand a few meters apart with no fences between them.
A Pattern of Mass Shootings
Eighteen people have died and about 15 were wounded, police said, after eight suspects armed with AK-47 rifles and pistols opened fire at a bar in Wedela township, about 50 miles southwest of Johannesburg, on the night of Saturday, Sept. 26.
Ten people were killed and 11 wounded at an entertainment venue in Lwandle, near Cape Town, in the early hours of Sunday, Sept. 27. No arrests had been made in either case as of Sept. 28.
Gauteng provincial police commissioner Tommy Mthombeni told reporters that one line of inquiry into the Wedela tavern shooting was a “turf war in terms of illegal mining,” and that it could be retaliation for another shooting at the same tavern about a month earlier. Ramaphosa said police had images of the suspects in the Wedela attack and were working to track them down.
In June, multiple shooters killed 12 people in an informal settlement in Cleveland, a Johannesburg suburb, and police cited a possible link to illegal mining. About six months earlier, nine people died when gunmen opened fire at a tavern outside Johannesburg. In a 2023 attack in KwaZulu-Natal, an entire family of 10 — including a 13-year-old boy — was gunned down at home.
Guns, Troops and Inquiries
Roughly 60 people are killed every day in South Africa, a country of about 62 million people with one of the highest murder rates in the world. SAPS recorded 5,427 homicides nationally between April and June, a 5.9 percent drop from the same period the year before but still an average of nearly 60 a day. The January-to-March quarter averaged 58 a day. Guns account for most homicides, and police and researchers have long pointed to the sheer volume of illegal firearms in circulation.
The high murder rate is decades old, but mass shootings tied to organized crime have become a sharper source of public fear, fueling demands that the government dismantle criminal networks, including contract-killing operations that security analysts consider a major driver of such attacks. Analysts also point to too few officers patrolling crime hot spots, a slow-moving justice system, and allegations — still under investigation — that senior police officials have ties to organized crime.
Ramaphosa called organized crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development” in his February State of the Nation address, where he announced he would deploy the army to support police. Troops began moving into the Western Cape and Gauteng, with the Eastern Cape added days later. KwaZulu-Natal, where the Sept. 22 shooting took place, was not included in that deployment.
Separately, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has been on leave since mid-2025 amid an ongoing judicial commission of inquiry into allegations that he interfered with organized-crime investigations. He denies the allegations. On Sept. 21, police seized his cellphone at his KwaZulu-Natal family home under a court warrant, the second such seizure.
