THAMSANQA D. MALINGA | Gun violence not new, just because it's now in Gauteng

There has been a massive outcry, accompanied by lots of speculation, regarding the recent mass shootings in Gauteng. The minister of police, Bheki Cele, has experienced the busiest schedule since assuming the role.

I might be off the mark with this observation, only time will tell, but in a short space of time over the last couple of weeks, Cele has criss-crossed Gauteng and addressed communities – and typical of politicians, we have seen him "extending largess" in a form of police resources to affected communities.

Guns blaze every odd night and bodies fall into the swelling river of blood reminiscent of the apartheid state-sponsored township violence we experienced leading up to our first democratic elections. The media, on one end, seems to be thrilled at the opportune moment of garnering an audience – don’t waste a good crisis, it is said. On the other end, you have majority of South Africans bemoaning a scourge that has never been seen or heard of in post-apartheid era. But is it? Oh! We of easily swayed and fickle minds.

Gauteng is not an exception to bodies falling at the sound of rifles rattling in the stillness of the night. We have ignored the issue of gun violence for far too long in other parts of the country. As a result, when bodies start falling in Gauteng, suddenly, we all cry of a national catastrophe.

Children born in the Cape Flats, post-democracy, have never experienced the stillness of the night. The same for those in Durban – Umlazi, at the Glebelands Hostel. We can say much about marauding gangs of Basotho nationals or township hoodlums being law unto themselves in Gauteng.

We can spread unverified voice notes about foreign nationals arming themselves and planning to shoot South Africans on sight all we want. The reality is that we have ignored the issue of guns in wrong hands in the Cape Flats and KwaZulu-Natal for too long. We are now making this to be a phenomenon unheard of.

It is said that history has no blank pages, so to substantiate this argument let us go back in time. It was in 2016 that the township of Nyanga in the Cape Flats was declared “the murder capital”, and the “most dangerous city in the world outside a warzone”. Have we forgotten the 2016/2017 campaign by Nelisa Ngqulana calling for a second police station to be built in Nyanga, a township of about 60,000 residents serviced by only one police station? I don’t even have the appetite to calculate the ration of a cop per citizens.

Nyanga is not an isolated case. Almost all townships along the Cape Flats have made an appearance in the top 10 most dangerous places in the world and places with high murder rate in SA.  

What needs to be noted as well are the gun mass murders that are taking place in other Cape Flats townships such as Mitchells’ Plain, Hanover Park as well as Manenberg every day, every week and every month, leaving children dead as a result of being struck by stray bullets during gang drive-by shootings.

Gang, tribal as well as political killings have also rocked KwaZulu-Natal, more especially the urban metros. Just like the Western Cape in 2014, the government of KZN instituted a commission of inquiry into political killings – also known as the Moerane commission. No action came out of it.

So, what makes the recent Gauteng mass shootings different from those that the people in the Cape Flats as well as those in Durban and surrounding areas have experienced? Illegal guns in wrong hands, mass shootings, violent armed robberies should never be given media attention nor receive swift action by Cele just because they are in one province instead of the other.

It is not a problem until it rears its ugly head in Gauteng, and for that we will continue to pay.

• Malinga is a director at Mkabayi Management Consultants and an author