A neighbour of a 19-year-old man who was shot dead during the Shaun 101 street bash in Soweto and witnessed the incident says criminality among young boys in the township has become “a fashion” and violent attacks at year-end street parties are now the norm.
The teen was one of four men stripped naked and assaulted during an alleged mob justice attack in Diepkloof Zone 5 in Soweto in the early hours of Thursday.
Police said the motive is still under investigation, despite speculation on social media linking the attack to a rape.
Residents say the violence erupted after a string of robberies as crowds dispersed from the bash.
Kamogelo Tshifhiwa Nndwammbi, who lived next door to the young man killed, said the scenes were “devastating”.
“We were sitting there. It’s an event that everybody attends every December. So it was chaos, it happens that there are different groups of boys there in the hood.”
Nndwammbi described the bash as “crawling with different groups of boys drinking, snatching phones, doing whatever”.
“I wouldn’t regard my neighbour as an angel, but I would say he was also there for certain agendas. People wouldn’t want to brutally kill you like that for nothing.
“It was mob justice, but then there was an individual who went in with a gun and shot him dead on the spot. The guy who shot him is probably the driver of the taxi which the guys vandalised.”
Nndwammbi said violence at such gatherings was “becoming a fashion” in Soweto.
“Seeing someone being shot dead right in front of me was devastating. I don’t want to lie; I can’t even recover from it. It’s a pandemic for us people of Soweto.”
He said local gangs of young men, calling themselves “amapantsula”, routinely terrorise parties and rob revellers.
Another resident, Katlego Moola, who also witnessed the attack, alleged the four boys had been stealing phones when they targeted the wrong taxi.
“I did witness what happened yesterday [Thursday]. What happened was these kids were going around, mugging people, so they happened to vandalise a wrong Quantum, and the owner shot them.”
Moola confirmed that private, heavily armed security was present at the event, but the violence unfolded as crowds dispersed.
“There was also a girl who was raped by four boys and got stabbed on her thigh. The boys were taking turns on her. We found the girl crying; she was traumatised.”
Moola runs a local podcast on YouTube called Ikasi Li Vukile, interviewing young men involved in gang activity. He said many of them describe gang involvement as a “means of survival”.
“They have homes, but they are notorious; their parents are tired of them. Even in their communities, they can’t chill there anymore. They need to rent shacks in another township, they need to pay rent, and others have kids.”
He said it was not the first time violence erupted at street bashes and sent a warning: “They even said they are going to target another event that’s coming up here in Diepkloof.”
Police spokesperson Col Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said the motive behind Thursday’s attack remains unclear.
“The circumstances surrounding the incident are unknown at this stage, and police will be investigating a case of murder and three counts of attempted murder,” Nevhuhulwi said.
She urged the community to allow police to do their work.
TimesLIVE
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