In a community an hour west of Johannesburg, eight gunmen stormed into a tavern on a Saturday night and killed 18 patrons. A few hours later, 10 people at a bar in Cape Town were killed in a separate mass shooting.
South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, but the killing of 28 people in two separate mass shootings on a single night last month still came as a shock to many in the country.
This year, 210 people have died in 45 mass shootings in South Africa, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. That is up from about 20 mass shootings last year, according to Julian Rademeyer, a senior adviser at the initiative. Mr. Rademeyer said he compiled the data from police reports and that the numbers may be an undercount.
Violent crime in South Africa has even drawn the attention of President Trump, who has used crime against white Afrikaner farmers to justify punishing the South African government with visa restrictions, aid reductions and a diplomatic boycott.
Experts and police data shows that violence in South Africa affects citizens of all races, with Black South Africans facing the highest murder rates. Here’s what to know about South Africa’s deadly struggle to contain gun violence.
South Africa is rife with organized crime.
Groups of illegal miners fight for territory in abandoned shafts with precious minerals like gold. Gangs battle over turf to sell drugs and some force businesses to pay protection fees or face violence. Experts say those disputes often lead to the bloodshed.
There is a large community of illegal miners in Wedela, the township west of Johannesburg where 18 people were killed in the tavern. Residents have told South African news outlets that the shooting may have been the result of a dispute between rival mining groups.
The police have yet to name a motive. The province’s police commissioner, Tommy Mthombeni, told reporters that investigators are exploring a turf war involving illegal mining groups and potential retaliation for a prior shooting at the same tavern.
Mass shootings, Mr. Rademeyer said, play a dual role for criminal gangs. They exert control over territory and they terrorize communities, so that residents are less likely to seek help from the police.
Guns are readily available.
The streets of South Africa are awash in illegal firearms, experts said. Some are smuggled into South Africa from neighboring countries, including military-grade weapons like AK-47s.
Soldiers in Lesotho have been arrested on suspicion of belonging to criminal syndicates that steal military firearms and sell them to illegal miners in South Africa.
Thembisile Patekile, the police commissioner in South Africa’s Western Cape Province, said last year that the police seized more than 90 firearms this year that were traced back to Namibia.
But most of the illegal guns in South Africa come from within the country, according to Mr. Rademeyer. Guns have been stolen from the homes and cars of legal owners, as well as from police stations and a military base.
Last year, Firoz Cachalia, South Africa’s acting police minister, told Parliament that from 2019 to 2024, more than 3,200 police firearms were stolen and more than 200 were lost. Fewer than 600 were recovered, he said.
All legally owned guns in South Africa must be registered with the Central Firearms Register, a national regulatory body. But because of administrative problems, the agency has failed to keep accurate records, Mr. Rademeyer said. Criminals exploit these failures to divert legal weapons into the underground market, he said.
South Africans say the police aren’t doing enough.
Mr. Rademeyer said mass shootings speak to a sense of impunity among criminals in the country.
“They clearly don’t feel that there will be any consequences,” he said.
Criminal networks have infiltrated the upper echelons of the police force, according to testimony in an ongoing judicial commission on corruption in the justice system. In areas where illegal mining is common, Mr. Rademeyer said, there have been allegations that police vehicles are transporting illicit minerals.
The police fear armed gangs, “who, in some cases, seem to clearly have military training,” Mr. Rademeyer added.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa deployed soldiers to communities this year to assist the police in combating violent crime, but mass shootings have escalated. Dorothy Mmushi, a crime analyst, said specialized anti-gang units needed additional personnel, resources and technology. Current policing strategies, she added, remained mostly reactive rather than focused on prevention.
“The people managing, running, facilitating, enabling this kind of crime to happen, the police are not getting to them,” Mr. Rademeyer said.
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