MITCHELLS PLAIN SHOOTING AND VIOLENT CRIME IN THE WESTERN CAPE

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MITCHELLS PLAIN SHOOTING AND VIOLENT CRIME IN THE WESTERN CAPE 

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) notes the horrific mass shooting that took place last night in Rocklands, Mitchells Plain, where three people including a nine-year-old child, were brutally murdered and two others seriously wounded. This tragedy reflects a much deeper, long-standing crisis of violent crime on the Cape Flats, a crisis the EFF has repeatedly warned Parliament, the Provincial Government, and the national security cluster cannot be solved through routine policing, or reactive crackdowns. 

 According to reports, four armed assailants opened fire on a home from the outside before storming the property and continuing their attack inside. A 21-year-old woman and 26year-old man were killed alongside the young child, while two men aged 51 and 36 remain hospitalised. This was a deliberate, calculated act of terror that has devastated a community already living under gang violence and state abandonment. Communities like Mitchells Plain, Gugulethu, Delft, Mfuleni and Kraaifontein have for years lived under siege, and the state has consistently failed to provide protection, security, or meaningful intervention. 

The killing of a child in their own home is a moral indictment on the government and the inevitable outcome of decades of inequality, underresourced policing, political neglect, and the complete collapse of safety in working-class communities of the Western Cape. 

The EFF notes the statements made by the Provincial Police Commissioner condemning the shooting, and the assignment of the Anti-Gang Unit to hunt down the perpetrators. While arrests are necessary, they are not enough. The cycle of violence in Cape Town continues because there is no sustained, coordinated, and well-resourced intervention addressing the structural social conditions that enable gang networks to thrive: poverty, unemployment, overcrowding, the drug economy, and the absence of state support for youth and families. 

The EFF has consistently pushed for a comprehensive, multi-portfolio inquiry into violent crime in Cape Town and Parliament’s recent adoption of our motion, which compels coordinated oversight by the Portfolio Committees on Police, Social Development, and the broader security cluster, was a crucial and long overdue breakthrough. The latest crime statistics, showing that the Western Cape remains the epicentre of mass killings, gang-related murders and targeted shootings, reaffirm exactly why such an intervention is essential. This latest incident in Mitchells Plain is a painful reminder that the crisis continues to escalate. Month after month, communities bury their children while political leaders offer condolences, and press conferences instead of structural change. 

The people of the Western Cape cannot continue living in a war zone while the state treats their trauma as a normal feature of daily life. We stand with the families who have lost loved ones in this brutal attack, and with the entire Mitchells Plain community. 

The EFF will continue to use every parliamentary, legal and political avenue to ensure that this crisis is not ignored, and that the government is forced to act with urgency and competence.  

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