Two separate murders in the early hours of Tuesday left two families in the Marikana informal settlement, in Khayelitsha, hurt and confused.
Gloria Frans, 61, told the Cape Argus on Tuesday that her granddaughter Thembeka Dumani, 23, was shot dead outside her door about 3am after returning from a friend’s home. Frans said she last saw Dumani on Monday when she visited in the company of a friend from Bellville.
“Thembeka had her own shack in Marikana. She often came to visit, so on Monday she came with her friend and it was nice, we all had fun.
"Now it is so hard to believe that we will never see her again. We are really hurt as a family, it would be better if she was sick or something,” she said.
“What is sad about her death is that no one knows what happened, no one knows why she was killed so cruelly because she was shot twice in the face, three times in the head and once in the back.
“We are just confused and wondering what she did do to deserve this kind of painful death because my granddaughter was a people’s person.
“She liked to have fun with friends, she liked to make jokes,” the grieving grandmother said.
Dumani’s mother was so distraught that she had covered herself in a blanket.
Dumani’s sister, who asked to remain anonymous, blamed Dumani’s friend from Bellville for taking her sister out for drinks on Monday night. “She came with new clothes and new weave she had bought for Thembeka, and she took her out to celebrate her belated birthday.
"I blame her because if she did not come and take her out that night, my sister would be alive.”
In a separate incident in the same informal settlement, 26-year-old Lulamile Hlezuphondo was also shot dead about 2am on the same morning.
His uncle Mziwonke, 51, from Delft, said the news came from another cousin who also lives in Marikana.
“What worries us the most is that no one knows why he was killed because he was nice person who never wronged anyone, but what is done is done.
"We will just bury him and leave everything to the police because we don’t even know where to start to look for the perpetrators.”
Police spokesman FC Van Wyk said investigations into the two murders were under way. “A murder docket had been opened in Philippi East SAPS.
"Police are following a possible lead.
"No one has been arrested at this stage.”