A 60-year-old Kabokweni man shot seven people dead, including five family members and a three-year-old girl, then shot himself early on Thursday morning, Mpumalanga police said.
The shootings began at the man's house in Clau-Clau around 2am when he opened fire on his two wives, aged 50 and 35, and his six-year-old daughter, Inspector Olga Marais said.
It was thought the man had argued with his younger wife.
He then went to the home of a friend of his eldest son, with whom he was reportedly not on speaking terms, and forced the man to walk with him to his son's house.
At his son's house, he ordered the friend to knock on the front door and then entered and shot both his 35-year-old son and daughter-in-law, also 35, in the head.
The couple died at the scene.
The friend ran away.
The man then broke into a house across the road where he shot a 28-year-old woman and her three-year-old daughter.
The little girl later died in the Themba Hospital in Kabokweni. Her mother was in a stable condition.
It was believed the woman and the man had been in a dispute over his cattle grazing on her land.
Then he went to another house where he shot and injured a 40-year-old woman, whose husband allegedly owed him R150. She is also in a stable condition in hospital.
The gunman then entered a fifth house where he shot dead a 65-year-old man who was thought to have owed him R30.
From there he went back to his son's friend's home and set it alight.
No one was at the house at the time.
The man then returned to his own house and shot himself in the head.
He died at the scene.
The identities of those killed have been withheld until their families have been informed.
The Kabokweni tragedy was one of two family tragedies on Thursday and the third in a week.
Police are searching for a 36-year-old Mabopane man after his wife was found dead and his twin daughters injured in the couple's home in the North West on Thursday.
Captain Garwin Geldenhuys said gunshots were heard and Caroline Motalaute was found dead in her dining room and her two daughters Kgomotso and Shasha were in a serious condition.
On Tuesday 35-year-old Johnny Jooste appeared in the Ceres Magistrate's Court for allegedly shooting dead seven people on a farm on the Koue Bokkeveld in the Western Cape on Sunday.
Among the dead were Jooste's two children, his wife and four other relatives. - Sapa