The desire to take revenge on, or “send a strong message” to, residents, rival gangs and law enforcement.
These are some of the possible reasons cited by experts after a mass murder in Lusikisiki, in the Eastern Cape, at the weekend that left 18 people dead.
The mass shooting happened early on Saturday in Ngobozana village and claimed the lives of family and friends who had been preparing for a ceremony.
The attack happened in homesteads on the same street. In one house 13 people were killed, 12 women and one man. In another four people were killed. The 18th victim died in hospital.
The police have since deployed “dedicated team of detectives and forensic experts” to the crime scene in an effort to catch those linked to the massacre, national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola confirmed.
Criminology lecturer and head of department at Fort Hare, Thompho Tshivhase, believes the recent extortion cases could be a possible motive for the shooting.
“The killing of extortion suspects may exacerbate violence as rival factions vie for control, contributing to the cycle of retribution and fear. Entire families may be targeted due to revenge motives or ongoing feuds, with suspects returning to eliminate remaining members,” he said.
Tshivhase said Lusikisiki was a hotspot for violent crime, which was often linked to gang violence. He also cited the province's high murder rate, attributing it to “systemic issues like illegal firearms on the streets, lack of community cohesion and the prevalence of violent crime linked to gang activity and taxi violence”.
Recent crime stats showed that 17.6 people per 100,000 were murdered in the Eastern Cape. The province saw a 2.6% increase in murders to 1,169 — an increase of 30 cases. It also led with murders due to arguments and misunderstandings, recording 254 cases.
Independent crime analyst Thabang Bogopa, made a link between this shooting and the recent inroads made by police in cracking down on extortion cases in the province. Bogopa cited revenge and the “need to send a message” as some of the possible motives for such killings.
If you understand how criminals operate, they are [notorious] in terms of revenge or trying to send a message. So that is a challenge first of all. Secondly, if you go and profile some of these gangs, you'll realise it's some of the gangs that are now migrating from the Western Cape to the Eastern Cape.
— Thabang Bogopa, independent crime analyst
Earlier this month, Masemola confirmed 38 cases of extortion were under investigation in the province.
He said police shot and killed 14 alleged extortionists across the country — six from KwaZulu-Natal, three in the Eastern Cape, four in the Western Cape and one in Mpumalanga.
Among these were Mthatha's Daluxolo Mareke, who was shot and killed by police during a shoot-out with his two accomplices.
“If you understand how criminals operate, they are [notorious] in terms of revenge or trying to send a message. So that is a challenge first of all. Second, if you go and profile some of these gangs, you'll realise it's some of the gangs that are now migrating from the Western Cape to the Eastern Cape.
“The other challenge is that the corruption that used to happen in government [has been] minimised. Now that that's been controlled, it means they are competing for the little that's left,” Bogopa said.
Bogopa said there was underreporting of such incidents and these were often ignored until they came into the national spotlight.
Weighing in on why families would be targeted by unscrupulous criminals, Bogopa said this was nothing new and had also played out in KwaZulu-Natal — but for political reasons.
“It was used in KZN for political reasons. When people compete for [political office], they would kill almost the entire family and this was mainly done to send a strong message, even to the police.
“They are sending a strong message these gangsters to the communities, competitors and particularly law enforcement that should you continue, we will continue as well. And when cases like this arise, the likelihood is that they will never be finalised in court or reach trial stage or result in convictions,” he said.
Bogopa said interventions put in place to curb these incidents often “temporarily worked” as they would subside for sometime. But the state of the country's intelligence units and the poor protection of witnesses created a “loophole” for criminals, he said.
Transport and community safety MEC Xolile Nqatha was expected to visit Ngobozana on Monday afternoon to meet the bereaved families and visit the two victims still in hospital.
Speaking to TimesLIVE Premium ahead of the visit, Nqatha said the incident was among the most “shocking and devastating” to hit the province.
“We have not had an incident of this magnitude in the entire province, but police are hard at work to ensure the perpetrators are brought to book,” he said.
While Nqatha said it would be difficult to speak to the motive behind the shooting, given the investigations under way, he speculated that these types of killings often relate to family feuds, turf wars between underworld figures, or gangs and drugs.
While Lusikisiki was not a murder hotspot, according to Nqatha, rape and ukuthwala were rife in the area. The district under which Lusikisiki falls — OR Tambo — itself was a murder hotspot.
This is the third incident of this nature in a little over a year. Last year in March, five family members, four women and a boy, were found shot dead in their Luphondo village home. They had all been sleeping in one room when unknown shooters killed them.
A month before that, 14 people were shot dead in one night. Three were killed at Thantseka village, while seven others were shot 13km away in Qunu. Three people, including a couple, were shot at Gqunqa and another person died in Mvezo.
In November 2022, a family of seven died in a hail of bullets in Thantseka while they were preparing to bury a relative who had been shot dead a week before.
Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane earlier this month revealed the province was without a head of crime intelligence for almost a year, hampering efforts to effectively deal with the economic sabotage caused by protection fee syndicates.
“There's still more to be done by the state. The state has more capacity than we think, it is given more powers to intercept these things ... and intervene before victims suffer such a loss,” he said.
“But it seems like we are at the mercy of the criminals. When the criminals want to stop, they will stop, but when they want to [act] they will do so uninterrupted.”
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