Senior Research Fellow at Africa Asia Dialogues, Thembisa Fakude says there’s no sense of urgency from the leadership in the country in addressing a spate of mass shootings.
Twenty-eight lives were lost in Gauteng and the Western Cape over the past weekend.
A tavern shooting saw 18 people being killed 18 Carletonville on the West Rand, while another 10 people were killed in Lwandle in the Western Cape.Fakude says citizens are being terrorised.
“I don’t think it’s just crime. I mean, terrorism is a crime, but if you look at the sequence of events, the size of those that are killed at the same time, we realize that there’s a pattern here and there are similarities to what will be regarded in any other country as terrorism.
And in South Africa, because we lack that term and we insist on calling it a crime as if there’s someone who’s going around killing people at the intention of just robbing them.
But I think it’s meant for a much bigger cause and this is, as far as I’m concerned, terrorism and it’s meant to destabilise this country.”
