By Oluwaseun Sonde
South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa has called on security agencies and community members to work together to urgently bring the perpetrators of the shooting of 15 people dead in a Soweto tavern to book.
In a statement released by the Presidency on Sunday, the President expressed his condolences at the deaths of the 15 people in a Soweto tavern and the murder of four people under similar circumstances in Pietermaritzburg.
Recalled that 15 people were shot dead, while several others sustained injuries in Soweto, the incident that happened at a tavern in the early hours of Sunday morning July 10, 2022.
The incident unfolded shortly after midnight, when group of men armed with rifles and 9-millimeter pistols entered bar in Nomzamo informal settlement near Johannesburg and started shooting “randomly” at the patrons, Gauteng Police said in a statement.
Police said 23 people were shot in the establishment, 12 died at the scene and 11 were rushed to a nearby hospital with injuries. At least two more people were declared dead at the hospital.
Also, four people have been killed and eight wounded in a bar in eastern South Africa after two men fired indiscriminately at customers, police said, on the same night as a bar shooting in Soweto left 15 dead.
Police were trying to verify if the attacks were linked, they said, noting their similarity.
In the city of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal province on Saturday night, two entered the bar and “fired random shots at the patrons” before fleeing, local police spokesman Nqobile Gwala said.
Ramaphosa offered his sympathies to the families of the people who have lost their lives in the two incidents, and wishes injured survivors a speedy recovery
The President said: “As a nation, we cannot allow violent criminals to terrorise us in this way, regardless of where such incidents may occur.
“As government, citizens and structures of civil society we must all work together even more closely to improve social and economic conditions in communities, reduce violent crime and stamp out the illicit circulation of firearms.
“Every single violent death is unacceptable and worrying, and killings on the scale we have seen in Soweto, Pietermaritzburg and previously Khayelitsha must spur us into a collective effort to build communities and make South Africa an unsafe place for criminals.”
Comments