49 murders and 32 attempted murders in Cape Town. Murder count increased

For the period 13 to 19 April 2026, gang related and extortion violence across the Cape Flats remained at crisis levels.

There were 49 murders and 32 attempted murders. The previous week recorded 48 murders and 35 attempted murders. So the murder count increased again, while attempted murders remained brutally high.

These are lives ended in intentional acts of violence, families shattered, and communities forced to live through the same terror week after week.

Forty nine murders means 49 homes where someone is not coming back. It means 49 families receiving that call, waiting at a hospital, a mortuary, or a police station. It means children staring at empty chairs, parents trying to answer impossible questions, and communities once again absorbing the human cost of a state response that still looks badly coordinated and painfully ineffective.

When I visited Ottery last week, the shooting was happening with warzone frequency. That is the reality for residents, the sound of gunfire becoming part of daily life in a community that has every right to expect safety. Says DA’s Ian Cameron

Operation Prosper is still not prospering for the people of the Cape Flats.

This is not a criticism of soldiers on the ground. It is a criticism of a haphazard intervention with too little measurable impact. SAPS intelligence remains a serious problem. We keep seeing operations that look reactive, scattered and shallow, instead of sustained, targeted action against the gang structures that move guns, organise killings, control territory and profit from extortion and narcotics. If this were truly intelligence driven and prosecution led, communities would be seeing stronger case building, better targeting, and meaningful disruption of gang and extortion networks. That is not what these numbers reflect.

A stop start deployment without credible intelligence, proper detective follow through and prosecution led investigations will not break gang related and extortion violence. Communities do not need more noise. They need illegal firearms removed, gang bosses targeted, extortion networks dismantled and solid cases prepared for court.

Cape Town urgently needs expanded policing powers for gang related gun crime to competent local and provincial government, to act as a real force multiplier. A city facing this level of organised violence cannot remain trapped in a centralised policing model that keeps failing the same people. Is this about politics, or the people? IC