Another Cape cocaine killing: Hitmen in golden car, guns cache linked to Gauteng robbery

A Cape Town killing, linked to a court case involving an R18-million cocaine consignment and firearms from a cache previously stolen in Gauteng, now adds to a list of local murders that appear to be connected to the global drug trade.

Christopher Carelse, 37, who faced accusations relating to the multimillion-rand cocaine consignment, was fatally shot on Wednesday, 17 June 2026.

His killing has sparked more questions among policing sources about the safety of witnesses and exhibits in key drug matters.

Previous cases involving killings and cocaine include:

• That of suspected Terrible Josters gang boss Peter Jaggers and his associate William Petersen, of Cape Town, who were reportedly kidnapped in Gauteng in July 2024. Their bound bodies were later found in a river in the Free State. It is suspected that they were murdered after a cocaine consignment meant to have been retrieved along the Western Cape coast could not be accounted for.
• The fatal shooting of an unidentified man off the Still Bay coast in July 2024, when a group of alleged traffickers was on a boat at sea to retrieve a R252-million cocaine consignment. The man’s body was apparently dumped overboard.

As for Carelse, he had initially been an accused in a case involving the R18-million cocaine consignment.

Police discovered it in June last year in a storage facility in Roeland Street, in the Cape Town city centre.

FOR CONTEXT

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Officers also discovered in the storage unit an AK-47 rifle, an Uzi submachine gun, five 9mm pistols and an assortment of ammunition.

At the time of this crackdown, another accused, Raed Cupido, then employed in the banking industry, was arrested (he remains in custody).

Carelse was detained a while after the Cupido arrest and appeared to have become a State witness in the ongoing case.

‘Gunmen in a gold vehicle’

Western Cape police spokesperson Captain Frederick van Wyk, without identifying Carelse, confirmed Wednesday’s shooting to Daily Maverick.

Carelse had been outside a premises in the Cape Town suburb of Kensington when a gold-coloured vehicle drove by.

“The same vehicle later returned […] and two unidentified males alighted […] armed with firearms,” Van Wyk said.

“The victim ran into the premises, and the suspects followed him, while shooting at him.

“He was shot multiple times and was later declared deceased on the scene by medical personnel.”

Van Wyk said the motive for the killing was under investigation.

A judgment, from November last year, delivered in the Western Cape high court, provides further insight into the criminality in which Carelse and Cupido were allegedly involved.

The judgment relates to an appeal that Carelse had lodged to be freed from custody.

He failed in that appeal, but his murder now makes it clear that he was later released from detention.

‘Undiluted cocaine’ and ‘international cartels’

According to the high court judgment, the investigating officer in the case said that the R18-million-worth of cocaine discovered in the Cape Town storage facility last year was “undiluted and therefore believed to originate from several international drug cartels.”

The investigating officer, who was not named in the judgment, added that “it is rare to discover such pure cocaine as the drug would usually undergo several stages of being ‘cut’ and mixed with other substances before distribution and sale”.

He had deduced that Cupido and Carelse were “so-called ‘first-receivers’ of the cocaine as it is smuggled into South Africa by international drug cartels”.

Some of the firearms seized in this case had been stolen in Gauteng.

According to the court judgment, the investigating officer said that three of the recovered firearms “were stolen during a business robbery in Boksburg in 2019”.

In February that year, TimesLive reported that an arms and ammunition shop had been targeted and around 100 firearms were stolen.

‘Increased level of destruction’

According to the judgment in Carelse’s failed bail appeal, the investigating officer said that the three firearms in the storage unit were linked to the “same robbery” in which “69 other firearms were also taken”.

Four of the firearms discovered in the police swoop on the Cape Town storage facility were also “not registered on the firearm system of South Africa”.

The investigating officer said: “At this stage, it is unknown how these firearms entered into South Africa. This is of grave concern to me as two of these firearms are fully automatic and therefore capable of inflicting an increased level of destruction.

“In other words, the firearms found in the storage facility (the unit) are not the standard fare that are typically seized in a police bust […]

“In this case, several of the firearms found […] are unique in that they are undocumented. This is disturbing as it means that an organised crime entity has likely found a point of (illegal) entry for these firearms into South Africa.”

Security matters

Drug trafficking matters, meanwhile, are the focus of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry that is investigating accusations that a cartel has infiltrated the country’s criminal justice sector, politics and private security.

KwaZulu-Natal police boss Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi initially made these allegations at a press conference in July last year.

The Madlanga Commission has recently heard from several police witnesses who have detailed how colleagues, by intent or incompetence, thwarted global trafficking investigations.

One of the matters focused on by the commission is a R200-million cocaine consignment intercepted in Isipingo in 2021.

The drug consignment was stored at the Hawks building in Port Shepstone, from which it was stolen months later in what is widely considered an inside job.

Mkhwanazi has previously referred to the stolen cocaine, saying that it ended up in Johannesburg, where it was again looted.

He alleged that this looting had sparked “a majority of the murders” that followed in Johannesburg – including, it has been suggested, that of Oupa John Sefoka, better known as DJ Sumbody, who was shot dead in November 2022.

CROOKED BLUE LINE

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The stolen Port Shepstone cocaine led to sources with policing ties questioning on Thursday whether the cocaine seized last year in the Carelse and Cupido case was still safe in state custody.

There were also concerns about the safety of State witnesses and even the accused in cases that pose obvious risks.

On Thursday, a witness testified in private before the Madlanga Commission about cocaine previously seized in KwaZulu-Natal.

This hearing was held in-camera due to security concerns and to prevent sensitive information from entering the public domain and jeopardising investigations. DM