Durban — The family of one of the men killed in KwaMashu in the Qhakaza area on Tuesday night said they have unanswered questions as to what happened and why he was killed.
David Brown and another unidentified man were found on the side of the road with multiple gunshot wounds. The family said their hands were tied with a black cable tie.
The family members refused to give their names, saying they were still scared and confused about what had happened.
“We really don’t know what happened. We can’t say anything because we don’t understand why they were killed,” said a family member.
Another family member said Brown was driving with his friend (an unidentified man). She said the friend received a call from Qhakaza.
“Somebody called Brown’s friend and asked him to come here. They came here and the car was taken, they took their cellphones and tied them up,” she said.
A friend of the unidentified man said his friend was driving with Brown and the car had not been found. Moreover, the community members who heard the gunshots described the area as dangerous.
A community member, who refused to be named, said they were no longer shocked to hear gunshots in the area.
“We heard multiple gunshots on Tuesday night at around 10.10pm and no one got out to see what was happening,” he said.
Whenever they hear gunshots, he said, no one dares to leave their home to see what is happening.
“We are used to this,” he said.
The victims were found in the morning by people who were going to work, he added.
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Nqobile Gwala said charges of murder and robbery were being investigated by KwaMashu SAPS after two bodies of men aged 20 and 30 were found at Qhakaza area, KwaMashu Men’s Hostel, on Wednesday.
“It is alleged that two bodies were found on the side of the road with multiple gunshot wounds to the body. The victim’s vehicle, firearm and cellphones were taken,” said Gwala.
Speaking on the increased levels of gun violence in Durban in recent months, human rights activist and KZN violence monitor Mary de Haas said the question needed to be asked as to where the firearms were coming from. This, she said, was the job of the police and crime intelligence.
“There has to be stricter gun regulation, there are just too many guns on the streets.”
Another criminologist said KwaZulu-Natal has been branded as a hub and the capital of gun violence for decades, without any sign of slowing down.
Professor Witness Maluleke, a rural criminologist at the University of Limpopo, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said: “This is a continuing worrying factor, with limited repercussions.”
“Some of the obvious contributory factors to the high spate of gun violence in KZN points towards lawlessness, easy accessibility to dangerous weapons, disobeying the rule of law, inclusive of the toothless criminal justice system (CJS), social ills and normalising violence, among others.”
Maluleke said a lasting remedy to this situation required a multidisciplinary approach, involving every societal stakeholder, “and accepting that our CJS failed in all their attempts and they cannot win the war against gun violence in KZN, specifically, and other provinces, in general”.
Last week seven homeless people were shot under a bridge close to the KwaMashu police station.
The crime stats released in August showed that the murders in KZN decreased from 1 623 cases to 1 584 from April to June 2023 compared with the same period in 2022.
In the same period, rape decreased from 1 953 cases to 1 879, while hijacking decreased from 913 cases to 835. Robbery with aggravating circumstances decreased from 6 334 to 6 084.
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