South African police have launched a manhunt for eight gunmen who opened fire at a township bar west of Johannesburg, killing 17 people and wounding 15 others in an attack that lasted long enough for the assailants to move from the patio to the interior and back out again. The shooting began at around 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, in Wedela, a semi-rural township in the Carletonville area, southwest of the city.
Thirty-two people were shot in all. Police said the dead included 13 men and four women, and that the attackers carried AK-47 rifles and pistols.
The gunmen first targeted customers drinking outside the bar, then walked inside and kept shooting, according to police. Some patrons were searched during the attack. “They allegedly searched some patrons,” police said. Before fleeing, the attackers set two vehicles alight.
Forensic Teams and Troops at the Scene
Forensic officers and army troops were deployed to the bar in the hours after the shooting, and plain clothes officers examined the burnt-out cars left behind. Police have not indicated a motive.
The scale of the attack alone would have made it one of the deadliest single shootings South Africa has seen this year. It did not stand alone for long.
A Second Mass Shooting Near Cape Town
Hours later, in the early hours of Sunday, Sept. 27, gunmen struck an entertainment venue in a township outside Cape Town, killing 10 people and wounding 11. Five of the victims were declared dead at the scene; the others died of their injuries on the way to a hospital or after arriving.
Together, the two attacks left at least 27 dead, police said on Sunday, Sept. 27. No motive has been given for either shooting, and no arrests had been made in either case as of that morning.
The killings came days after another mass attack on the other side of the country. On Sept. 22, 11 people, among them a pregnant woman, were killed when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township in the city of Durban.
A Country With 60 Murders a Day
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and its authorities have struggled for years to contain gang-related gun violence. Illegal weapons are widespread, and roughly 60 murders are recorded every day in a country of 62 million people — a toll so steady that individual killings rarely register beyond the communities that absorb them.
What has changed, and what has alarmed officials and residents alike, is the frequency of attacks that kill in double digits. The recent run of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with the violence often linked to turf wars between gangs involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining — the latter a persistent scourge around the gold belt west of Johannesburg, where disused shafts and informal operations have drawn armed groups.
The government has already reached for a blunt instrument. Earlier in 2026, the military was deployed alongside police in the areas with the highest murder rates in an attempt to bring armed violence down. Soldiers were among those posted at the Wedela bar after Saturday’s shooting.
The pressure on the state has been building for months. In February 2026, President Cyril Ramaphosa described organized crime as “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development,” Ramaphosa said.
For now, the investigative task is enormous and the leads are thin: eight suspects sought in Wedela, an unknown number in the Cape Town-area attack, two torched vehicles as physical evidence and dozens of wounded survivors whose accounts will shape what detectives can build. As of Sunday, Sept. 27, police had made no arrests in either shooting.
