The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is alarmed by the escalating wave of mass shootings and violent killings across South Africa, which once again claimed the lives of innocent people in the West Rand, Gauteng.

At least 18 people were killed and more than a dozen injured when heavily armed gunmen opened fire at a tavern in Wedela township near Carletonville. Police have reported that the attackers were armed with AK-47 rifles and pistols and fled the scene in vehicles. The motive remains under investigation.

This latest massacre cannot be treated as an isolated incident. The Carletonville area has previously been affected by serious violent crime associated with illegal mining and the criminal economies that surround abandoned and disused mines. In June, 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at the Jumpers informal settlement, and the Gauteng police commissioner stated that the possibility of a connection to illegal mining activities could not be ruled out. Investigators identified more than ten crime scenes in the settlement.

More recently, police shot and killed a wanted alleged illegal-mining kingpin in Carletonville after he allegedly pointed an AK-47 at officers, with an AK-47 subsequently recovered. These incidents demonstrate the deadly intersection between illegal mining, organised criminality, the proliferation of illegal firearms and the inability of the state to establish effective control over communities and territories where criminal networks operate.

The EFF is equally concerned because this violence is not confined to Gauteng. In KwaZulu-Natal, a recent mass shooting in KwaMakhutha claimed 12 lives, including that of a pregnant woman. Police indicated that some of the victims had been on Crime Intelligence’s radar in connection with suspected illegal activities, while a feud between rival groupings had not been ruled out. In the Western Cape, 14 people were killed in two separate shooting incidents in Lwandle and Khayelitsha over the same weekend.

This is not a normal state of affairs. While communities bury their loved ones, the state continues to respond to mass killings after they have already occurred. The EFF rejects a policing model that is largely reactive, arriving at crime scenes to count bodies instead of preventing criminals from acquiring military-grade weapons, dismantling organised criminal networks, and protecting vulnerable communities.

The crisis is even more horrifying when viewed alongside the continued killing of women. On Sunday, another woman’s body was discovered in an open veld in Springs, bringing the number of women’s bodies found in different parts of Ekurhuleni to 11. This is an indictment of the state’s failure to create an environment in which women can live without fear of being abducted, assaulted, and murdered.

The EFF therefore calls for an urgent national intervention into the policing crisis, including the establishment of a specialised national task force against mass shootings and organised gun violence; and the immediate intensification of operations against illegal mining syndicates, including the financial networks, weapons suppliers, corrupt officials, and organised-crime structures that enable illegal mining to flourish.

The EFF sends its deepest condolences to the families and communities who have lost loved ones in these senseless acts of violence and wishes those injured a speedy recovery.