The attack took place late last night. Police responded to reports of a shooting just before midnight and found over 20 people with gunshot wounds of which twelve were confirmed dead at the latest count.

The gunmen were reportedly dropped off by a vehicle and then proceeded to move through the area as they fired on people at several locations before fleeing in the same vehicle.

The area, in southeast Johannesburg, where the shooting took place, is connected to illicit mining activity.

The country has seen a sharp rise in illegal mining activity in recent years as formal mining investors have moved out of historical mining areas after years of misguided government mining policy, regulatory uncertainty, weak enforcement, and collapsing public infrastructure.

The vacuum has been filled by heavily armed illicit mining networks. These groups no longer operate as small informal crews. In many areas, they work at an industrial scale, bring their own security teams into the communities where they operate, and fight for control of shafts, dumps, tunnels, and mineral-rich ground.

Several sources allege that the illegal mining kingpins have the support of senior political leaders in South Africa while exercising a degree of corrupt control over the state’s security forces.

Over several years, illicit miners have been involved in running battles with one another and with the security forces of formal mining companies. These confrontations have included turf wars, armed robberies, underground sieges, ambushes, and clashes around active and abandoned mining sites.

For residents of affected areas, the result is a collapse of ordinary safety. Communities live between criminal syndicates, armed protection groups, illegal miners, and weak law enforcement. Tuesday night’s attack has not yet been officially tied to illicit mining, but it took place in an area already associated with that economy and carried the hallmarks of organised armed violence.

Sources in the security world told The Common Sense that the shooting is linked to illegal mining and the shooters can be thought of as an expert team that originated in a neighbouring country.