On a recent Saturday night, a minibus taxi drew up to a tavern in the gold-mining town of Carletonville west of Johannesburg. Eight men armed with AK-47 rifles alighted from the vehicle before gunning down patrons. Eighteen people died.

“They entered the main entrance of the tavern and started shooting randomly,” said Mfuneko Dyosini, adding that two colleagues from the gold mine he works at were killed in the massacre. “They all died on the spot.”

Just hours after the September 26 attack another 10 people were shot dead at an entertainment venue near Cape Town. Days earlier gunmen stormed a house in the coastal city of Durban, killing 11.

While South Africa has long struggled with one of the world’s highest homicide rates, the nature of murder in the country is changing. While most of those killed die at the hands of people they know, an increasing number are being killed in mass shootings linked to competition among criminals as organised crime becomes increasingly entrenched in the economy.

Drugs, extortion, illegal mining and violence between the operators of mini-bus taxi routes are the most-often cited motives.

“Mass killings don’t just happen out of nowhere,” said Julian Rademeyer, a senior adviser at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. “The aim is to sow terror, to terrorise the community, to potentially terrorise any rivals who may be coming up, and also to take vengeance against your known competitors.”

At least 210 people have been killed in 45 attacks this year that GI-TOC classifies as mass shootings — those involving at least three deaths. Thirty-six of those attacks were in Gauteng, the country’s economic hub and the center of its gold-mining industry, and the Western Cape, where Cape Town is plagued by gang violence. Of the attacks, 31 occurred since the beginning of June.

Sixty-seven of 83 deaths that were tied to a motive were linked to gang conflict, extortion and illegal mining.

“This year there seems to be a far more pronounced increase in mass killings,” Rademeyer said. “These events seem to have gained momentum quite sharply, from about June onwards.”

The deaths come even as the country’s overall homicide rate is declining, with the 5 426 people murdered between April and June — a 5.9% drop from the same period last year. The decline comes even as President Cyril Ramaphosa was compelled to address the nation on the issue of violence against women with the bodies of 11 women found in an area east of Johannesburg since July 15.

What the mass killings do represent is the growth of organised crime, with the World Bank estimating criminal activity cost South Africa $40-billion in 2023.

South Africa ranked seventh in a 2025 GI-TOC index of 193 countries affected by organised crime, lagging behind only the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. Among the most prevalent crimes, according to the organisation, are extortion and protection racketeering, mineral smuggling, the drugs trade and arms trafficking.

And there are few consequences for criminals with only about one-in-10 murders resulting in a conviction. The police force is riven by corruption and arms are now more freely available, according to Rademeyer.

“There’s always been a steady pool of weapons and ammunition available that has increased quite sharply in recent years,” he said. “There’s leakages of weapons from state stockpiles, from the police.”

A commission of inquiry into allegations that criminal syndicates have infiltrated South Africa’s criminal justice system has been running for more than a year. The police minister has been placed on leave and at least 14 senior officers have been suspended.

“The state quite clearly has lost control of the crime situation,” said David Africa, executive director of the African Centre for Security and Intelligence Praxis. “We have a police service that has failed.”