Illustrative image | Coffins representing youth killed in gang wars. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach) | Students and civic groups march demanding justice. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Lulama Zenzile) | Gun. (Photo: GroundUp) | Esmine Francke (12) was killed in a shooting in Kraaifontein in Cape Town on 19 August 2025. (Photo: Supplied) | Two-month-old Moegsien Isaacs was fatally shot in August 2025 in Bonteheuwel in Cape Town. (Photo: Supplied) 
A baby boy and a young girl are among those who have been killed in the most recent spate of shootings in South Africa’s gangsterism capital, the Western Cape.
Daily Maverick understands that this violence comes after nearly 270 murders were recorded by about one-fifth of the Western Cape’s police stations last month. Those stations are the so-called murder ones because of the high number of killings reported at each.
Shootings, particularly, have again surged around Cape Town with at least 13 people murdered over a week.
While typing this article on Tuesday, 26 August 2025, this journalist was alerted to reports of two separate shootings – one in an area where parts are known as gang hotspots and the second at a taxi pick-up point.
Later, unconfirmed reports of a third incident surfaced.
‘Softest heart’
Innocent children are among those who have been murdered and maimed in the latest series of shootings. Incidents involving stray bullets hitting children have been happening for years, but these crimes are not normal and must be treated as the outrageous anomalies they are - apathy is not an option.
Read more: Cape Town shootings — ‘unimaginable sadness’ as boy, 4, murdered two years after sister killed
In the recent shootings, two-month-old Moegsien Isaacs died after he was wounded when a stray bullet struck him while he was inside his Bonteheuwel home on Friday, 22 August.
The Hard Livings are among the gangs active in the area.
Replying to a Daily Maverick query on Isaacs’ murder, Western Cape police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Pojie said on Tuesday: “The status of the case is still the same. No arrests have been made yet.”
Just three days before Isaacs was killed, 12-year-old Esmine Francke was murdered when a stray bullet struck her while she was in another area, Wallacedene.
In that incident, an eight-year-old girl was also hurt, along with a third individual. Police did not specify the nature of their injuries.
Francke and the girl had been playing outside when Esmine was fatally shot. A suspect has since been arrested.
Francke’s school, Joostenberg Primary, posted a tribute to her on its Facebook page saying she always had “a smile on her face” and “the softest caring heart for her friends and those around her”.
It is suspected that the separate shootings that killed Francke and Isaacs were both linked to gangs.
Incessant shootings
Aside from different gangs fighting each other around Cape Town, there has also been a surge in taxi-related conflict. The combined violence has been concentrated in and around historically poorer suburbs known as the Cape Flats, where residents classified as being not white were forced to live under apartheid’s Group Areas Act.
Some forcibly displaced residents tried to find a sense of belonging in gangs. These older gangs, along with newer ones, still have strongholds in parts of Cape Flats suburbs, where countless law-abiding residents live, but their activities stretch into various other areas.
Read more: Western Cape’s ‘killing fields’ highlight devastating impact of illegal guns
While the South African Police Service (SAPS) has not yet released its latest official crime statistics, Daily Maverick understands that there were nearly 270 murders recorded at the Western Cape’s 30 “murder” police stations last month.
There are more than 150 police stations in the province, so the nearly 270 murders make up only part of the total killings recorded in July.
(Daily Maverick tried to get on to the official SAPS website several times on Tuesday afternoon to confirm the exact number of police stations in the Western Cape, but the website was not accessible.)
The province’s police have ramped up efforts to try and crack down on the violence, especially around Cape Town.
Earlier this month, seven people were killed in two mass shootings in Overcome Heights in Muizenberg.
This led to the Western Cape’s Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General Thembisile Patekile, visiting areas including Muizenberg and nearby Steenberg last week.
Some photographs of Patekile walking around Steenberg showed the seriousness of the situation – armed police officers accompanied him. And it was reported that while Patekile was in Steenberg, there was an active shooting scene in a neighbouring area.
Snapshot of violence
During the past week, 13 people, including Isaacs and Francke, were murdered in some of the shootings that have happened around Cape Town.
What follows here is a timeline of those incidents which police, through press statements or responses to Daily Maverick questions, have confirmed.
This is not a conclusive list.
Tuesday, 26 August: Two men were murdered during a shooting at a taxi pick-up point in Macassar. Two others were wounded. A police statement said: “The motive for this shooting is believed to be taxi-conflict related.”
Monday, 25 August: Six people were shot at a taxi rank in Philippi East. Two of them died, while three taxi drivers and a passenger were wounded. In a separate incident, a taxi driver was murdered and two others wounded in a shooting in Khayelitsha at the Vuyani taxi rank. Two men were also shot outside the Mitchells Plain Magistrates’ Court and police said one of them died. This incident was suspected to be gang related.
Sunday, 24 August: Three men were murdered in a shooting in Eerste River.
Friday, 22 August: Isaacs was wounded in the shooting in Bonteheuwel and subsequently died.
Thursday, 21 August: Two men were murdered and five others wounded in a shooting in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay.
Tuesday, 19 August: Francke was murdered, while the eight-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man were hurt during what police said was a gang-related incident in Wallacedene in Kraaifontein. A 26-year-old man was later arrested in connection with this incident for having an unlawful firearm and ammunition.
More resources
Michael Jacobs, the community police forum chair in Lentegeur, which is in the Mitchells Plain area where several shootings have recently also happened, on Tuesday told Daily Maverick that it was clear that more police resources were needed in gang hotspots.
“The SAPS needs to urgently resolve the issue of chronic police understaffing at gang stations which bear the brunt of these shootings,” he said.
“There’s a need to bring back retired experienced police officers who know how to deal with gangs not only on a disruptive level, but which include astute investigative capacity.”
It is known that there is a national shortage of detectives in the SAPS.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNpbcfdKw_S/
At the start of this month, in response to a Parliamentary question, the police ministry detailed some plans to address detective shortages.
The response said 3,469 entry-level constables would enter the detective services once trained.
It added: “A further 1,200 posts at the levels of Constable, Sergeant and Warrant Officer within detective services are in process of being filled through the re-enlistment and lateral transfer of members, whilst 353 former detectives will be appointed on contract.”
A few days ago, the SAPS indeed advertised “353 vacancies for former detectives with extensive experience in the detective environment, to be re-appointed on a fixed term contract (12 months)”.
Cop crisis
Sources with ties to policing have told Daily Maverick that instability within the SAPS distracts from crime-fighting.
They say if major concerns and suspicions relating to the police service are not properly dealt with, this in effect gives criminals more leeway to operate.
Tying into these concerns is an unprecedented policing scandal in South Africa that started up last month. KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi made several astounding accusations during a press conference.
His allegations included that a drug cartel based in Gauteng was controlling a high-level criminal syndicate that extended into the SAPS, the Police Ministry, Parliament, official prison structures, the judiciary and other law-enforcing authorities.
A commission of inquiry into Mkhwanazi’s accusations was meant to comment on Monday, 1 September, but it has been postponed in a saga that has led to the suspension of top Justice Department officials.
The type of allegations that Mkhwanazi made - of criminals colluding with state officials - are nothing new.
Read more: 28s gang ‘capture’ top Western Cape cops, prosecutors’ lives at risk – judge sounds corruption alarm
In the Western Cape, there have been suspicions of gangsters working with corrupt police officers, and of gang suspects infiltrating aspects of local government.
Shootings, meanwhile, continue unabated.
And amid all the high-level suspicions, accusations and scandals that attract scrutiny, people are being murdered - people like two-month-old Moegsien Isaacs and 12-year-old Esmine Francke. DM