Nine dead, 10 wounded in mass shooting at pub near Johannesburg

Nine people were killed and at least 10 others were wounded in a mass shooting at a pub near Johannesburg, South Africa, early Thursday. The incident occurred just before 1 a.m. local time outside the Kwanoxolo bar in Bekkersdal, a township about 28 miles from the city center. Police said the gunmen arrived in a white minibus and a silver car and opened fire on patrons before continuing to shoot as they fled the scene.

Authorities identified the attack as a mass shooting with a heavy firearms component. Maj-Gen Fred Kekana, the Gauteng provincial police commissioner, told SABC that one of the deceased was a driver from an online car-hailing service who had been outside the pub. Kekana said the perpetrators, armed with pistols and one AK-47, were unprovoked in the attack. "The poor patrons were just enjoying themselves when people came and shot," he told Newzroom Afrika.

Two of the victims were shot outside the tavern as they tried to flee, and a third was a taxi driver who had dropped off a passenger nearby, Kekana added. In the same interviews, a resident described gunfire as a near-nightly threat in Bekkersdal. "Criminals, they do as they please here," the unnamed man said. "These guns, they sound each and every evening... as soon as it's dusk we know that gunshots are about to sound and they will sound severely. It is terrorising our communities."

A manhunt for the suspects has been launched by the Gauteng Serious and Violent Crime Investigations unit in collaboration with the Crime Detection Tracing Unit. The spate of mass shootings at bars — commonly called shebeens or taverns — has raised concern in South Africa, with several recent incidents under review. Earlier this month, a mass shooting at an unlicensed bar near Pretoria left at least 12 people dead and 13 injured. In 2022, a shooting in the Johannesburg township of Soweto killed 16 people at a bar. On the same day in another province, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a different venue.

South Africa recorded almost 26,000 homicides in 2024, more than 70 per day on average, one of the highest rates in the world. While the country maintains stringent gun-control laws on paper, officials say many murders involve illegal firearms, complicating prevention efforts and policing in similar cases.