JOHANNESBURG, July  10, 2022 (bsS/AFP) - Two bar shootings, one in a
township close to Johannesburg, the other in eastern South Africa, left 19
dead, police said on Sunday as they tried to verify if the murders were linked.

In Soweto, 15 people were killed as they enjoyed a night out, police said,
when assailants drew up in a minibus taxi and began randomly firing
high-calibre guns at drinkers.

Police in the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal, reported
four people were killed and eight wounded in a bar when two men fired
discriminately at customers.

For the police it was too early to say if the assaults were in some way
connected, but they observed their similarity.

In Soweto, Johannesburg's largest township to the southwest of South
Africa's economic capital, police were called to the scene shortly after
midnight.

"When we arrived at the scene, 12 people were dead with gunshot wounds,"
police officer Nonhlanhla Kubheka told AFP.

Eleven people were taken to hospital, and three later succumbed to their
wounds.

The dead, who included two women, were aged between 19 and 35, provincial
police chief Elias Mawela told AFP.

"According to witnesses they shot randomly," said Mawela, adding forensic
police were still collecting evidence.

There were no details regarding the assailants.

"Nobody has been arrested. They came and shot at people who were having
fun," said Kubheka, commander of the Orlando police station, the Soweto
district where the shooting took place.

Hundreds of people massed behind police cordons as police investigated, AFP
journalists reported.

Only a small poster showing beer prices at the bar could be seen outside
the establishment located between houses.

Police led away crying relatives of those caught up in the drama who tried
to approach the crime scene.

The colourful Soweto Towers, a favourite bungee jumping spot for tourists,
stood out in the background.

- Random shooting -

In Pietermaritzburg, four people were killed and eight wounded around 8:30
pm (1830 GMT) on Saturday, local police spokesman Nqobile Gwala said.
Two men drove up, entered the bar and "fired random shots at the patrons",
before fleeing, Gwala said.

"A total of 12 people were shot. Two people were declared dead at the scene
and the other two died in hospital.

"Another eight people are still in hospital after they sustained injuries."
The dead were aged between 30 and 45.

The attack occurred at a tavern in a semi-rural area 20 kilometres (12
miles) from Pietermaritzburg, close to a car wash and a liquor store, according
to an AFP reporter on the scene.

Local mayor Mzimkhulu Thebola said the assault was over very quickly
without any robbery, conversation or fight.

"Every week we get news of people that have just been shot at randomly,"
said mayor Thebola, wearing a bright yellow winter jacket, the colours of the
ruling African National Congress.

An AFP correspondent saw blood stains on the ground in front of the bar.
The killings come two weeks to the day after the mysterious deaths of 21
people, mostly teens, in still unclear circumstances at a township tavern last
month in the southern city of East London.

The latest shootings also come a year after an outbreak of the worst
violence the country has seen since the end of the apartheid era three decades
ago brought democracy.

Last July saw large scale rioting and looting, ransacking of shops, a wave
of arson attacks and attacks on infrastructure and industrial warehouses
leading to more than 350 deaths and several thousand arrests with the country
already in the throes of a major Covid-19 wave.

Most of the unrest occurred in Johannesburg and the eastern province of
Kwazulu-Natal as South Africans protested the sentencing and incarceration of
former President Jacob Zuma.

Zuma was sentenced after refusing to testify on corruption charges during
his 2009 to 2018 tenure.