Johannesburg – Police said six people were killed on Wednesday in a shooting near Cape Town, where local authorities blamed power cuts affecting security cameras for hampering the investigation.
The shooting, which authorities said was suspected to be gang-related, occurred in Ocean View.
“A vehicle pulled up in front of a house,” police spokesperson Novela Potelwa said.
“The occupants of the vehicle went inside the house and started shooting at individuals inside the premises.”
Five men were killed on the spot. A sixth was taken to a local hospital but was confirmed dead upon arrival, she said.
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No arrests have been made so far.
Mass shootings are not uncommon in South Africa, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates.
South Africa’s leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which runs the Western Cape province which includes Cape Town, said the latest killings were a “stunning indictment of the state of crime-fighting” in the country.
“It has been confirmed that ongoing blackouts in the area had disabled CCTV cameras at the time of the incident, thus severely hampering the investigation and police response to the incident,” DA spokesperson Gillion Bosman said in a statement.
Serving a population of almost 50 000 people, the Ocean View police station has only 61 “visible policing units” and 12 detectives, he said.
Despite its name, Ocean View has no sea vista. It was created in 1968 by South Africa’s apartheid regime as a township for so-called coloured people who had been forced out of sought-after areas overlooking the Atlantic.
South Africa has been battered by record blackouts over the past year, triggered by mounting problems at the beleaguered power utility Eskom.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pixabay
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