Guests at a house party in the Ziko area of KwaMakhutha township, south of Durban, came under fire late on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, when three gunmen forced their way in; 11 people were killed and three wounded. South African police have launched a manhunt for the attackers. Officials from the police and the province laid out the first details on Wednesday, September 23: 14 people — 13 men and one woman believed to be pregnant — were inside the small house when the three armed men arrived shortly before 11 p.m. local time and began shooting. Ten died at the scene, and four others were taken to hospital, where one later died of their injuries. The community had been left “in profound shock and grief,” KwaZulu-Natal Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli said.
Inside the Investigation
The attackers, carrying pistols and rifles, forced everyone into a single room before they started firing, then set alight a car belonging to one of the victims as they fled. Investigators were examining whether the burning vehicle was connected to the shooting, police said. Outside the house, bodies lay under sheets until stretcher crews carried them to pathology vans, while officers strung tape around the neighborhood and forensic teams combed the property. Colonel Robert Netshiunda, the provincial police spokesperson, said preliminary investigations had found that some of the victims previously came to the attention of Crime Intelligence over suspected illegal activities. Officers would say no more than that, citing the ongoing investigation, and they added that a feud between rival groupings could not be ruled out.
A 72-Hour Tracking Operation
As of Wednesday, police had made no arrests. A 72-hour tracking operation aimed at running down the three suspects was ordered by Acting National Police Commissioner Lt-Gen Puleng Dimpane, who instructed the KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner to activate it. She said investigators were following a “promising lead.” Ntuli visited the scene and urged residents to come forward with anything that might help. 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 Familiar Pattern of Mass Shootings
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, with roughly 60 people killed every day in a population of about 62 million. Between April and June, SAPS recorded 5,427 homicides nationally, a 5.9 percent drop from the same period the year before, but the toll still averaged nearly 60 a day. Police logged an average of 58 a day over the January-to-March quarter. Guns account for most homicides, and the sheer volume of illegal firearms in circulation is something police and researchers have long pointed to.
Similar attacks preceded the Durban-area killings. Multiple shooters killed 12 people in June in an informal settlement in Cleveland, a Johannesburg suburb; police tied that case to criminal gangs. Gunmen who opened fire at a tavern outside Johannesburg about six months earlier left nine people dead. In a 2023 attack in KwaZulu-Natal, an entire family of 10 — including a 13-year-old boy — was gunned down at home.
A Wider Security Crisis
The murder rate has run high for decades, but mass shootings tied to organized crime have become a sharper source of public fear, driving demands that the government dismantle criminal networks — among them the contract-killing operations that security analysts consider a major driver of such attacks. Analysts blame too few officers patrolling crime hot spots as well, along with a slow-moving justice system and allegations, still under investigation, that senior police officials have ties to organized crime.
In his February State of the Nation address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that he would deploy the army to support police, calling organized crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development.” The first troops moved into the Western Cape and Gauteng, and the Eastern Cape joined the operation days afterward. That deployment never reached KwaZulu-Natal, where Tuesday’s shooting took place. Separately, a judicial commission of inquiry is examining allegations that Police Minister Senzo Mchunu interfered with organized-crime investigations; he has been on leave since mid-2025 while that inquiry continues. He denies them.
The three gunmen were still at large as of Wednesday, September 23, with no one in custody.
